The Creators

Chapter Five: Arbortus

LUCILLA

The alarm bells tolled from every tower in the palace, the yells of men and the clanking of armor sounded from every corridor and stairwell. I kept my cloak wrapped tightly around me, trying to conceal the glowing patterns that laced my skin from toe to chin. I had a fortune in gold and jewelry tucked away in my sack, but that would hardly do me any good if the royal guard stopped us. I grabbed Julia by the wrist and pulled her from the corridor as a squad of heavily-armored knights turned the corner. We kept our backs pressed to the walls of the alcove while the men clanked past us, rushing toward the room that had exploded from the top of the tower.

“They’re not even looking for us!” Julia hissed. “They don’t know what happened, but they will soon, and we better be out of the palace before then!”

“If the royal guard sees me, they’ll detain me for my own safety,” I said breathing heavily, “and if Father sees what I’ve become… let’s not think about that.”

I poked my head from the alcove, looking left and then right.

“Julia!” I whispered.

“What?” Julia hissed.

“This is really fun,” I grinned at her, “we’re playing hide-and-seek.”

“Except if you get caught, you’re not ‘it,'” Julia hissed, “you’re dead!”

“That just makes it better!” I giggled, pulling Julia out of the alcove and dragging her down the hallway. I’d always engaged in thrill-seeking behavior, but this was worrisome. Julia would have to play therapist for me once we were in a safe place so that we could determine the root-cause of my… you’re still thinking of her as your priestess, I scolded myself as we rounded a corner. She’s a fucking god, not your servant! My excited grin stayed glued to my face as we weaved our way down steps, tiptoed through halls, ducked into rooms, and clambered into closets. There were several times when Julia had to plaster her palm over my mouth to keep my giggles from giving us away, and the wrathful look she gave me only made it worse. If this was my flight-or-fight response, we’d be solidly fucked if we actually got caught.

“What in the Sweet Mother is wrong with you?!” Julia growled as I guided her down the last flight of steps of the upper floors.

“I’m sorry,” I giggled as we rounded the stairwell to the courtyard, “it’s just so much fucking fu—”

Julia practically tackled me into a closet. Heavy bootsteps thundered past us, followed by the soft patter of slippers on the stones. Two mages walked by, their bald heads gleaming in the torch light, the spot between their brows shining with their melded astral power. They stopped in front of the open doorway, and I silently prayed that the darkness of the closet would keep us hidden in the shadows. I pulled my cloak up around my neck to conceal the glowing patterns on my skin as Julia’s palm covered my mouth, anticipating another bout of foolish mirth.

“Did they recover Princess Lucilla’s body?” one of the mages asked.

“Chances are it was burnt to ash,” the other mage said. “An explosion powerful enough to rip a hole in the tower wall would disintegrate a person.”

“And her priestess?” the first mage asked.

“Also, most likely dead,” the second mage said. “How did we miss an astral bomb of such yield? How could an assassin have even gotten it in the palace? It would have to be the size of a horse to produce that kind of blast!”

“I don’t know,” the first mage grimaced, “but you can bet the emperor is going to ream us gaping for this oversight.”

“One of the maids said she heard sounds of lust when she was emptying the chamber pots;” the second mage said, “did the guards say if a man came into her suite?”

“No,” the first mage said, “only her and the priestess. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Princess Lucilla chose a nun who was loose with her vows.”

Julia pressed her palm into an air-tight seal over my mouth as uncontrollable laughter raged against my clenched teeth. I could practically feel the fire thrumming beneath her skin as she seethed silently, and I had to hold her power within me to keep it from bursting alight on her flesh. This was a woman so devout that she denied her very godhood until she could no longer, and this mage had the audacity to question her piety? It was fucking hilarious. The sound of running feet echoed through the hall, prompting the two mages to turn. A third mage shot into view, breathing hard and red-faced.

“Dratus, Backtius,” the third mage gasped, holding my hand-mirror aloft, “look at this!”

The other two mages studied it for a moment, perplexed expressions on their faces.

“Do you see the burnt patterns on the frame?” the third mage asked excitedly. “Those were on every surface of the princess’s room! The Heat Bringer killed Princess Lucilla!”

“Impossible!” the mage called Dratus said. “All seven-hundred subjects are locked away and accounted for in the keep; none of them could have escaped without setting off dozens of alarms!”

“Telavia was right all along,” the mage called Backtius gasped. “We never had the one.”

“Princess Lucilla said as much to her father earlier today,” the third mage said, his voice edging with excitement. “She must have found something the emperor didn’t, and the Heat Bringer killed her before she could spread the information!”

“Her priestess,” Backtius muttered, “she was a bright-elf, wasn’t she? Not of high blood, but certainly around the right age… raise the alarm and sequester all bright-elves in the palace! Inform the emperor that the Heat Bringer is here, and get him to safety!”

The mages ran off, and Julia tentatively released her grip on my mouth.

“Looks like hide-and-seek is over,” she said as we stepped out of the closet. “Now we just run.”

We dashed through the courtyard, raced along the inner-wall and darted down the stairs to the bottom levels. The top floors of the palace tower were reserved for royalty, so subterfuge was a necessity when escaping them, but the bottom levels were packed with common folk, and our plain cloaks allowed us to blend right in. Troops of guards ran in opposition to us, ignoring us as they raced up the steps we’d just climbed down. Julia and I burst into the main courtyard, and the gate was blessedly still open. We were a mere hundred paces from freedom when the voice yelled.

“You two, stop!” it was a commanding, baritone growl that sent our heels skidding to a halt. I turned around to see a mage leading a platoon of guards right for us. I wheeled around to make a run for the gates, but another platoon had barred our exit.

“Julia,” I hissed as the men encircled us, “burn them!”

“Kill them?! Julia gasped. “That’s a mortal sin!”

“Holy shit,” I growled, “Julia, do you know what will happen if my father captures you?”

“Maybe we can talk our way out of it,” Julia whispered as the men surrounded us. As if in response, the men drew their swords, and the mage’s forehead began glowing from his astral meld.

“Take off your hoods,” the mage said, “put your hands in the air, and get on your knees.”

“Julia…” I said through clenched teeth, begging the girl. I felt the power pulsing in my veins, I could faintly see the energy glowing through my cloak; patterns of white shining through the fabric. I felt Julia growing warmer against me, drawing her power from me, preparing to set alight and announce her presence to the world. The fire died, the heat faded, and the light dwindled beneath my cloak.

“I can’t,” Julia whimpered, her posture slouching in defeat. “I’m sorry, Lucilla.”

I inhaled a ragged breath, feeling my heart sinking beneath my lungs. The swords gleamed around us, pointing their sharp edges at our bodies, their bearers watching us behind hard, merciless eyes. Julia put her arms around me, and I put my arms around her, the excitement I felt earlier no longer thrumming within me; only terror.

“Gatison!” an even more commanding voice yelled, causing the mage to turn sharply around. “What in the blue fuck are you doing?”

A man dressed in resplendent officer’s armor stepped into view, his masked helm making him look as intimidating as his voice sounded. Another man wearing similar armor strode alongside him, his faceplate also down, his hand on the hilt of his sword.

“I’m—” the mage started, but never finished.

“You’re wasting valuable time and resources!” the officer yelled. “Harassing common folk when you and your men should be on the top floors with everyone else! Do you know what’s at stake here?!”

“These two were running for the gate!” the mage yelled indignantly, “They were—”

“Get your bony ass up those stairs Gatison, or so help me, I will be wearing it as a boot!”

The mage did not need further encouragement. He gave Julia and I a suspicious glower, and then ordered his men to follow him up the stairs, where the supposed Heat Bringer was undoubtedly lurking. I didn’t notice I’d been holding my breath, and I let out a deflating exhale, feeling the dread wash from my body. Right; that was certainly enough excitement for one day. I took Julia by the hand, and—

“You know,” the commanding voice said in my ear as strong hands grabbed hold of my shoulders, “when you’re running for your life, Princess, stopping when someone says ‘stop’ is about the dumbest fucking thing you can do.”

“Julia!” I screamed before a gauntleted hand clasped over my mouth.

“No one is getting outside of this palace unless someone with rank bullies their way out,” the officer growled. “The gates may be open, but there’s a wall of guards on the other side. Now, you might outrank me, Your Grace, but you’re also supposed to be dead.”

I looked out of the corner of my eye, and saw Julia nodding as the other officer whispered something in her ear. He seemed much gentler than my captor; holding Julia’s arm softly, resting his other hand comfortingly on her back, guiding her forward with respect. His faceplate was up now, and I recognized the portrait behind it: Torondi, one of my own guards. I turned to my left, and saw Drask’s fearsome face staring back at me from his lifted mask.

“You’re not a fucking officer!” I hissed. “You’re a royal guard! And just what the fuck are you doing anyway?!”

“We’re neither, actually,” Drask grinned, “but it’s amazing what you can get away with if you have the right outfit and act like you belong. And what we’re doing, Your Grace, is getting you and the goddess as far from your father as possible.”

“Where are you taking us?” I asked as we passed through the gates, and neared a well-guarded checkpoint.

“Does it matter?” Drask asked as we approached the checkpoint, “I know you don’t have a reason to trust me, but you’re just going to have to. Either that, or burn your way out of here.”

The first option seemed like the preferable one, so I kept my mouth shut, my hood up, and my eyes down as Drask bullied, threatened and intimidated our way past each checkpoint, and out of the palace.

JULIA

Drask and Torondi had clearly smuggled people before. Lucilla and I were whisked from the checkpoint, and briskly shoved into the back of a carriage. Lucilla couldn’t hide her contempt as she regarded the simplistic nature of the carriage, though I suspected she would have appreciated it more if she’d known what our next mode of transportation would be. Roadblocks had been set up on all streets, and every carriage was being searched down to the rivets. Torondi quickly ushered us out of the back of the carriage, and into a fish cart. Lucilla opened her mouth to spew a paragraph of royal indignation, but I pushed her into the smelly pile before she could, and then dove in after. Lucilla squawked her disgust as Torondi rolled us away from the roadblocks leading out of the city, and along the pier. We were given half a breath’s warning before he tipped us over the edge, sending us plunging into the murky depths of the Terondia Bay. Drask hauled us into the canoe, sputtering and cursing, our clothes soaked to the bone, our hair covered in scales and slime, before Torondi jumped in, and paddled us down the river. After Lucilla had given everyone a resounding piece of her mind, we sat in silence, the only sound being the soothing drip and splash of wooden paddle meeting still water. About an hour later, Drask pulled us onto the bank of the river, and then ran into the woods to scout. Torondi handed us dry clothes from his sack, and then turned his back as we bathed in the river, dried ourselves off, and clothed ourselves in overlarge tunics. Torondi set out some logs for us to sit on, and then built a fire ring, set the kindling and sticks, and looked at me expectantly. I’d never actually used my powers for… anything, so when I raised my hand to ignite the wood, I might’ve overcompensated. Torondi’s hair was blown back and singed, his face was blackened with soot, and tendrils of flame licked at his coat, but he didn’t mind in the least. He whooped and applauded fervently, and I bowed, my cheeks blushing furiously, and sat next to Lucilla.

“You,” Torondi said to Lucilla, his voice thickly accented, “you are bind?”

“What?” Lucilla asked.

“You are bind,” Torondi said, gesturing to the intricate patterns of swooshing flame that thrummed alight over Lucilla’s entire body.

“Yes, Torondi,” Lucilla smirked, adding a fake accent to her words, “I am bind. Now I get why you didn’t speak to me yesterday; you don’t speak common tongue, do you? Where in the world is an elf born not speaking the common tongue?”

“The Gratoran Desert,” Drask said as he stepped from the forest, holding a pair of rabbits in his hand, “our mother is whiter than you, but our dad is a big green bastard.”

“Big,” Torondi grinned, flexing his muscles, “bastard,” he said, making a stabbing motion with his hand.

“What my articulate younger brother is trying to say,” Drask said, pulling out his knife and deftly skinning the rabbit, “is that our father is an orc warlord. Those orcs your father used came from our clan, and we came with them.”

“Find god,” Torondi said, gesturing appraisingly to me, an endearing smile on his face, “bring home.”

“That’s our mission,” Drask said to me, spitting the rabbits and putting them over the fire, “but it’s up to you if you want to come back with us.”

“I think we’ll pass,” Lucilla said for me, chuckling contemptuously, “thanks though.”

“I don’t remember asking you a damn thing, Princess,” Drask said sharply, causing Lucilla to start upright. She was not used to being talked to like that, especially from a dark-elf. Knowing Lucilla, that probably meant this night was going to get ugly.

“Why would I go to the orc empire?” I asked, “What is there for me?”

“Safety, for one,” Drask said, turning the spits over. “It’s as far from Terondia as you can get, and the elves wouldn’t think to look for you west of the Gratoran Wall. Secondly, most orcs are Creationists, seeing as how four of the last six Creators were orcs, so they know how to treat divinity. Thirdly, you’d get to do some good, and I know how much nuns love doing good.”

Actually, what I wanted to do was find a remote monastery atop some mountain, and spend the rest of my days in humble service to the Holy Mother, but I knew that dream was dead. Lucilla’s father would identify me, the church would excommunicate me, and my title as ‘Sister’ would be stripped from me. I wouldn’t be allowed within ten miles of a holy site for the rest of my life, but I could still serve God in other ways. Perhaps I could turn my curse into a blessing, and do the work of The Holy Mother outside of her church. I could perform my blasphemous miracles, give their credit to the true God, and spread the message of the Holy Mother to heretics all across the land. I could bring a nation of heathen orcs into the light of truth. Yes, that would be my purpose.

“What kind of good?” I asked, smiling apologetically at Lucilla’s annoyed frown.

“Do you know about the underground city of Droktinar?” Drask asked, testing the meat of the rabbit with his knife.

“Yes,” I replied, “it was a city carved entirely from the bedrock, a thousand feet deep at some points. It was the joint project of Droktin and Arbitrus Gen, before they became enemies.”

“That’s right,” Drask said, quartering the rabbit, “the whole thing was supposed to be powered by a massive furnace, but Arbitrus never lit it, so a city fit to house a million people has been lying abandoned beneath the desert, just waiting for a Heat Bringer to come along and start it up.”

“Why?” Lucilla asked. “Who gives a shit about an abandoned city underground? It was a stupid idea anyway.”

“It gets hot enough to fry eggs on stone during the day, and cold enough to freeze water during the night,” Drask replied, giving Lucilla an annoyed look. “The Gratoran Desert is a hostile place, but beneath the surface, it’s temperate and comfortable. The orc empire is a fractured mess of warring tribes fighting over shitholes in the sand. If the furnace of Droktinar is ignited, then my people won’t need to kill each other over a meagre oasis. You’ll have revitalized an empire overnight, and we’d be eternally grateful.”

“Your people?” Lucilla scoffed. “Drask, you’re an elf, just like the rest of us. You can’t possibly believe reestablishing the orc empire is good for anyone.”

“I think it’s a wonderful idea,” Drask said, “and I’ve lived my whole life in the Gratoran Desert, so don’t assume my heritage.”

“When Droktin opened his pass,” Lucilla said, pointing accusingly at Drask, “it took the might of the dwarven, human and elven nations to repel the flood that charged through it. There’s a reason ‘your’ nation is a scattering of tribes now. They had their chance at being a real empire, and they blew it.”

“Victors always write history, don’t they?” Drask laughed humorlessly. “I guess they chose to ignore the part where Arbitrus Gen melted Hektinar, killing a million innocent people and destroying the heart of the empire! An atrocity none of your nations even acknowledge!”

“That never happened,” Lucilla laughed. “That’s a conspiracy theory propagated by downtrodden orcs to justify banditry, and the fact that their too lazy to get a job.”

“Oh, it never happened?!” Drask seethed. “My people are lazy, are they? Well, you certainly enjoyed the kind of laziness my people could provide you, didn’t you Princess?!”

“Orcs make for an exciting lay,” Lucilla sneered. “They’re basically animals anyway, so it shouldn’t be a surprise they fuck like them. Why you shit-blooded half breeds insist on associating with them is beyond me.”

“Lucilla!” I gasped, but it was already out. Lucilla was taking the low road, and she was going to ride its racism right into the dirt.

“There it is!” Drask grinned, holding his hands aloft. “I was waiting for the high-blooded bitch to come shining through, and she did, like fucking clockwork. If you weren’t bound to a god, I would take your pale-skin ass behind a tree and—”

“And what?” Lucilla grinned. “Do what you people do?”

Lucilla and Drask went back and forth, hurling increasingly racist insults at each other as they both abandoned any pretense of political debate, and went right to a pissing contest. I sighed, reached into the fire, grabbed a kabab, and gave half of it to Torondi. I nibbled daintily as he ate sloppily, and we sat together and watched the argument get louder and louder.

“Why fighting?” Torondi asked in broken common tongue.

“I don’t know about Drask,” I whispered back, “but Lucilla doesn’t really care about Droktinar; she’s just mad that she won’t be sleeping in fine silk tonight. She’s used to a certain lifestyle, and doesn’t do well when it’s taken from her, so she’s making everyone else miserable. That’s… just what she does.”
“Not nice,” Torondi grunted. “No good.”

“Oh, she’s a good person,” I sighed, “but once she gets in one of these moods, there’s no getting her out of it.”

“Why love her?” Torondi asked.

“I don’t know,” I muttered, “I just do.”

I watched Lucilla’s body language change with each visceral comment; her back arching slightly, her chest jutting forward, the lacing on her tunic mysteriously becoming looser, her sneering grin growing wider. I’d seen this play a hundred times with Lucilla in bars and ballrooms across her estate; I knew how this story ended. I knew when I bound with Lucilla that there was no way I was keeping her monogamous, but I’d vainly assumed that we’d have a nice honeymoon period before she went searching for variety.

“Your brother and my lover are going to have sex,” I said to Torondi.

“Sex?” Torondi asked, making a motion with his forefinger and encircled thumb.

“Yup,” I sighed, resting my chin in my hands and my elbows on my knees. “Lucilla’s already decided it’s going to happen. It’s just a matter of time now.”

LUCILLA

I tossed and turned in my tent, feeling every stone and uneven patch of grass digging into my back. Nobody sane would choose to camp, but I guessed I hadn’t been making rational decisions lately. Julia didn’t seem to mind in the least. She was sleeping soundly; her chest rising and falling evenly, her breaths punctuated by cute little whistles of contentment. Bitch. I love you babe, but your ability to fall asleep on a dime is maddening. It didn’t help that my bout with Drask had me frazzled and hot-blooded, spoiling for a fight. Or something else.

“Julia,” I whispered, poking her shoulder. “Julia, wake up.”

“What?” Julia mumbled sleepily, her emerald eyes gleaming in the faint light that radiated from my skin.

“I’m horny,” I whispered, “do you want to fool around?”

“It’s…” Julia groaned as she checked her pocket watch, “…three-thirty in the morning. Masturbate.”

“I thought you said it’s a sin to engage in self-pleasure,” I whispered, peeling off her blanket. “I wouldn’t want to be a sinner now, would I?”

“Lesbianism is a much worse sin,” Julia mumbled, scooching her body down as the blanket pulled lower, trying to stay under the covers, “and please don’t point out the hypocrisy of that statement; it’s too early in the morning for a crisis of faith.”

“So…” I whispered, trying to find a tactful way to say what I wanted, “…by your reasoning, I should find a man to relieve me of my womanly desires.”

“We’ve been bound for less than a day, and you’re already going to cheat on me,” Julia grumbled sleepily.

“It’s not cheating if you give me permission,” I whispered hopefully. There was a tentative pause where Julia seemed to mull-over the idea.

“No,” Julia finally said, “you could use an exercise in self-control.”

You little bitch!

“Julia,” I whispered, pressing my naked chest against her naked back, “I’m going to stick my finger in your butt now.”

I spread Julia’s pale supple ass with one hand, wetted the index finger of the other with my mouth, and pushed it knuckle-deep into the tight aperture between the redhead’s cheeks. Julia’s body tensed, her anus clenched around me, her head shot backward, and the entire tent disintegrated in a blast of white heat.

“Oh, Good Mother!” Julia growled, “Sweet heavens, gosh-darn you, you fricken, stupid…”

“Julia,” I giggled, “are you mad? It’s hard to tell.”

“Fuck you, Lucilla!” Julia yelled, “The world doesn’t revolve around you and the needs of your fucking cunt!”

“Oooo,” I sniggered as I twisted my finger into her rectum, smiling as her thighs begin to shiver at the feeling, “that wasn’t very pious language. I think I’ll have to punish you for your sinful mouth.”

“Lucilla, you fu—” I cutoff Julia’s objections with a pressing palm, and brought her body deeper to mine, letting her feel the soft curves and bows of my form melding into hers, letting our warmth mingle in our vulnerable places. Julia, despite her iron-will and piety, was a sexual novice, which meant she was sexually easy. I pressed my lips to the curve of her throat, and sucked gently as my finger twisted and drove, slowly opening the virgin god’s anus, slowly melting her equanimity and will to fight me. Soon, the muffled yells she was delivering to my palm became muffled moans, the sharp look in her emerald eyes became a half-lidded gaze of needful lust, and her hips started sensually grinding into my pelvis, betraying the last of her defiance.

“You, my devout, holy love,” I whispered into her ear, “are a little, anal slut.”

“Goddamn you, Lucilla,” Julia moaned.

“Who would have thought,” I breathed heavily, “that beneath all those robes, and all that modesty,” I added another finger and curled, causing her entire back to spasm, “was a perverted little bitch begging for it in the wrong hole?”

“Fuck you,” Julia moaned again, the sound dragging out through gritted teeth.

“You never swear,” I smiled, inhaling her scent, smelling the intoxicating aroma of her arousal, “but the moment you get something pushed into your little asshole, all those words you’re not supposed to say come spilling out. It’s like I’ve found the key that unlocks the whore you keep trapped deep, deep down.”

“You’re the devil,” Julia muttered, her breathing heavy, her voice wavering, “you are evil sent from hell to put temptation in my path.”

“Maybe I am,” I laughed with a seductive fry, squishing my breasts against her hunching shoulders and twisting my fingers to the bottom knuckles, “maybe you’re my fallen angel, losing herself to my corrupting temptation, or maybe you’re just a disgusting cunt who’s good at pretending.”

“Hey!” Julia exclaimed, her tone pausing the seduction for a moment.

“What?” I whispered back, “I’m sorry, was that too far? I got a little carried away, didn’t I?”

“A little…” Julia mumbled.

“We can just cuddle if you want,” I said, kissing her neck, “while I get you off with my hands.”

“No…” Julia trailed off, looking over a pale shoulder, one emerald eye smiling at me, the other concealed behind a curtain of crimson hair, “I… I like it.”

“You like what?” I whispered, tickling her pointed ear with my lips.

“I like it when you degrade me,” she smiled shyly. “I don’t know why, but it really turns me on.”

“I know why,” I smirked, turning the seduction back on with a penetrating twist of my fingers, “it’s because of your religious guilt. They taught you that anything that feels good is bad, so you crave the punishment with your pleasure.”

“No…” Julia moaned, getting herself back into character.

“Yes,” I hissed in her ear, adding a third finger, feeling Julia’s virgin rim stretching against my knuckles, “all those years they taught you about the sins of the flesh, and all those years you guiltily fantasized about them.”

“That’s not true,” Julia whimpered, grinding her supple ass against the flat of my palm, pressing the back of my hand into my own crotch as our bodies melded.

“But it is,” I moaned, snaking my other hand over her pale thigh, and tracing its fingers teasingly down the line of her pelvis, “and those fantasies only grew darker the more devout you became. The repression of your sexuality twisted you into a masochistic freak.”

“That can’t be…” Julia moaned pathetically as she raised her thigh, letting my caressing hand travel between her legs.

“Now you need the degradation with your lust,” I gasped, pushing three fingers into her virgin slit, causing Julia to whine pleadingly as her pussy was penetrated by another for the first time in her life, “you need someone to tell you that what you’re doing is wrong, someone to tell you that you’re a depraved sinner. You think it’s because you need to atone during the act, but I know the real reason.”

“What?” Julia cried, shifting wantonly between my penetrating hands, trapped between the invasion of her two holes, assaulted relentlessly from both sides.

“The real reason you like being called a whore,” I whispered into her ear as I added the fourth finger to her ass, causing her entire back to wrench in concavity, “is because you secretly want to be one.”

“No!” Julia moaned a desperate, carnal moan. She was squirming between my hands; her legs spread and trembling, her hips writhing in pathetic reaction to stimulus from one hole, then the other, grinding sporadically from sensations that overwhelmed her, captivated by the violation of her sanctity, a slave to the prodding and caressing of my invading hands. I searched within her, I found her weak spots, and I exploited them mercilessly; pushing my fingers against them, encircling them teasingly, squishing the tender reaches of flesh between pressing digits and forcing spasms deep into her erogeneity.

“Yes, Julia,” I gasped, reveling in the control she was giving me, “you looked down on girls like me, calling us sinners and harlots, but deep down, you were always more of a whore than any of us. You wished you could dress like a slut and take it up the skirt behind a bar, you wished you could suck dick until your stomach was full, you wished you could be passed around from man to man until you were overflowing.”

“Yes,” Julia whispered, her voice ragged with pleasure, her body teeming with euphoria, “yesssss…”

“You want to be a little slut, don’t you?” I smirked, adding the thumb to her anal penetration, feeling her rim expand tortuously around my sinking fist.

“Yes!” Julia sobbed, pushing her ass backward, forcing her sphincter to stretch to an agonizing white circle about my bottom knuckles.

“Do you want me to teach you?” I asked, my voice as soothing as it was seductive, my fingers as tortuous as they were pleasing.

“Yes!” Julia gasped, hooking her ankle behind my calf, trying to give me as much room as I needed to violate her. “Teach me how to be a slut!”

“I can teach you, Sister Julia,” I growled, pushing my entire fist into her ass, marveling as her rim hugged around my wrist like a pulsing fleshy cuff, “but your desires are too twisted, too depraved to be some bimbo; you’re going to be a debased slave, a disgusting pig who gets off to the vilest of acts, who revels in the filth like the sinning whore you are!”

“Yes! Make me your disgusting pig!” Julia growled with me, her voice dripping with sensual avarice, her body lurching violently back and forth between my penetrating hands, trying to take both at the same time, trying to suck my invasion deeper into her depraved virgin holes. I rolled her onto her knees, and she pushed her ass in the air like a girl with experience, giving me a view of the debauched state of her pristine lewdness. Her anus was twitching around my wrist, her pussy was leaking down my forearm, her taint was a taut ribbon of pale flesh that glistened with her lecherous secretion. I stood behind her like a man preparing to thrust, and I violated my friend, my god and my lover like the whore she wanted to be. Julia’s pale back curved with each visceral push of my hands, indenting along the lithe rises of her muscles, casting shadows that revealed the tensed nature of her feminine arch. Her shoulder-blades pinched together, her arms flexed to hold her upright, and her crimson mane of luxurious waves bowed with her curving neck, her mouth panting the exaltation of her lust into the ground.

“Lucilla,” she cried, “I’m coming!”

I pushed the last fingers of my vaginally-penetrating hand into the redhead, and watched in perverse fascination as both my wrists disappeared. Her pelvic floor indented with the clenching of her lewd muscles, pulling my hands deeper inside her. I flattened my palms against the twitching membrane that divided her, and pressed along it, curving my fingertips and squishing the delicate flesh. Julia’s bent arms trembled, and then gave out as the god screamed a carnal tone of masochistic delight. Half her face planted into the grass, and she reached behind herself in whorish acceptance, grabbed the succulent fat of her pale glutes, and spread them wide. Her asshole was gaping around my fist; the white outline of her rim turning into the pink sheath of her sphincter turning into the red flesh of her rectum. Her pussy was a splay of reddened petals frothing with the nectar of her perversion, opening to reveal the tensed oval of her gripping lips, sucking my wrist into her. Both entrances clenched around me as Julia writhed on the ground, shifting in needful reaction, her breasts sliding into the dirt, her weight rocking about her bent knees. I pulled my hands out, watching as her holes contracted in the way only a virgin’s can, and then pushed all the way in again, and again, and again; giving her insides a moment of reprieve before I mercilessly violated them, stretching her holes with each forceful pass, testing the elasticity of her chastity.

She sobbed, begged and cried into the dirt, her voice high and desperate, trembling with the same cadence as the twitching of her churning insides. The arch of her back suddenly deepened, her ass shot backward to consume halfway up my forearms, her pelvis dropped, and she came. She came in a toe-curling, spine-wrenching display of depravity, her external reaction almost as dramatic as the vicious contractions of her internal euphoria. I held in the flame that would have ignited on her flesh, and the intricate patterns that covered my naked body shined in white brilliance, bathing the world around us in the pale light of our passion. I laughed as she screamed, and I pushed my hands deeper, ratcheting the intensity of her ascension as the final bouts of her pleasure wracked her. The cathartic expiration of heavy breaths marked the release of her climax, and Julia’s red-haired pussy soaked my fist and the soil beneath her legs as her pulse decelerated. The light on my flesh faded until the patterns glowed dimly once more, dwindling and brightening with the steady beat of my heart. I pulled out of Julia as she relaxed into an exhausted sprawl on the ground, and I licked my fingers as I nestled my body next to hers.

“Oh, Good Mother,” Julia gasped, her usual, pious nature returning to her. “I can’t believe I said those things!”

“I can,” I chuckled, holding out two fingers webbed with her lust. “Do you want to know what you taste like?”

“Maybe a minute ago I would have,” Julia wrinkled her nose, “now I just want to sleep. I’ll have to get up early in the morning to pray away all the sin of tonight.”

“You know,” I said as I sucked my fingers, “chances are, the mages have figured out who you are by now. By tomorrow, the entire empire will be looking for you; the Heat Bringer who killed the princess. The church of the Holy Mother believes Creators are heretics, and after adding murder to your infractions, you’ll surely be excommunicated.”

“I know,” Julia said with a sad smile, “but that doesn’t mean I’ll stop following the teachings of god.”

“But you won’t be a nun anymore,” I said with a sly grin, “which means your vows of chastity will be made null, and you can have sex with a man without it being a mortal sin.”

“You just want me to lay with a man so that you can,” Julia smirked back at me. “I guess you’re at least trying to remain faithful.”

“I will never cheat on you,” I said with complete conviction, “but Julia, we’re too young to be monogamous.”

“You’re right, I guess,” Julia said, “and I suppose you’re all worked-up right now, aren’t you?”

“I am,” I giggled, “so if you could, you know, reciprocate some of the affection I gave you…”

“Fine,” Julia sighed, “you can have sex with Drask.”

“Thanks babe,” I smiled, and planted a kiss on her ruby lips. I rolled over, rested a hand in my platinum hair, crossed a suggestive leg, and stretched my body lasciviously, displaying my glowing form to the darkness of the tree line.

“Oh, Dra-ask,” I called, “you can stop hiding behind that tree now.”

“What?!” Julia hissed.

“He’s been watching us the whole time,” I smirked as the gleam of his brown eyes shown bashfully from behind a tree. “He thought he was so sneaky, but I caught him.”

“Oh, Good Mother!” Julia exclaimed, scrambling for something to cover herself with, realizing she burnt all our clothes to ash, and then diving into the tall grass.

“I’ll find us a blanket after I’m done,” I whispered to the emerald eyes peering embarrassedly from the stalks. I drew by body upward, and then strutted to the dark-elf behind the tree, my gait a shifting display of lust that teased with each bulging cheek. The light of my body illuminated the forest like a pale lantern, and revealed Drask, failing to stuff his erection into his waistband. I grinned at the mortified dark-elf, grabbed his poorly-concealed weapon, and pulled him into a lecherous kiss. He stood in a shocked stupor for a moment, then traced his calloused rough palms down the smooth skin of my back, grabbed me greedily by the ass, and pulled me up. After thirty minutes of panting, cursing and moaning, I think we managed to work-out our differences.

JULIA

“Forever they will live as one, like two lovers in the sun,” I sang the old hymnal gently. “Shining from creation’s birth, to hold a tether to the earth.”

The river was calm in the morning, the water a glass mirror that reflected the dawn sun. Song birds whistled their rousing songs as the crickets chirped the last chords of their nocturnal tunes. I prayed silently by the riverbed, recalling each sin from the previous day, and asking the Mother for atonement. The soft sound of feet meeting earth came to my ear, and Lucilla knelt beside me, her hands clasped, and her posture demure and humble.

“Bless me sister, for I have strayed from The Mother’s path,” Lucilla recited quietly.

“Bare your sins before me, so that I may ease the burden on your soul,” I answered, and performed my last confession as a sister of the Maternal Order. After she’d listed the sins we’d shared, and the sins she’d done on her own, I took off the headdress of my habit, still covered in the grime and muck of yesterday’s ride in the fish cart, and placed it in the river. It floated gently away on the calm water before darkening with moisture, and sinking below the surface.

“We’ll traverse the Terondia River to Silvia Lake,” Drask said, hauling supplies into the canoe, “past there, the river will be watched, which means we’ll need to take the tributaries through Arbortus.”

“That’s dangerous,” Lucilla said, “the nymphs hate elves.”

“Not enough to harass us,” Drask grunted, taking my hand and guiding me gently into the craft. “As long as we keep our heads down and stick to the banks, they’ll leave us alone.”

Drask smiled as he took Lucilla’s hand in his own, and guided her into the canoe. He gave her a friendly smack on the butt, prompting a delighted yelp from my lover, and then pushed us off the bank. I didn’t remember much about geography, but I knew the route we were taking was going to be a long one. The elven empire was the eastern-most nation on the continent of Balamora, bordered by Arbortus directly to its west, and the human kingdom of Grundinar to the south. We’d have to traverse through Arbortus, and then the human kingdom of Drastinar, the human kingdom of Bulsinar, and the mountainous dwarven princedoms before we even got to Droktin’s Pass. After that, the Gratoran Desert was a vast wasteland that spanned the western third of the continent, making it the largest and emptiest nation of all. If legends were to be believed, there was also a great kingdom of mermaids called ‘Voda’ deep in the Drastinar Bay, but no one had ever confirmed its existence. The mermaids were a reclusive people, and due to their telepathic form of speaking, very few had ever communicated with them.
My mind drifted as Torondi paddled the long canoe up the river, the steady drip and splash of the paddle putting me in a meditative state. I found my eyes resting on his tanned forearms, and I watched dumbly as they flexed in rolling cords of muscle with each twist of his wrist, the veins bulging robustly in branching patterns from his bicep. His hands were clean, but rough; trimmed and washed nails, but scarred and battered fingers connecting to calloused palms. I wondered how they’d feel on my waist, on my breasts, cupping my backside, or sliding between my thighs…

“Julia?” Torondi’s thickly-accented voice broke me from my trance. I started upright, and then found myself blushing deeply.

“Are you good?” he asked, narrowing his beautiful brown eyes at me. “Water sick?”

“No,” I said quickly, “just… thinking.”

“Thinking, hmm?” Lucilla smirked from beside me, watching my gaze. “Thinking about something in particular? Maybe a certain, specific thing? Maybe something hot, and throbbing, and—”

“Wow,” Drask gasped, “look at that!”

Our canoe rounded a bend of the Terondia River, turning into the mouth of Silvia Lake. The expansive body of water was a crystal-clear pool, and from its glassy surface, reflected one of the great wonders of the world. Arbortus was a forest, but calling it such somehow didn’t do it justice. The Great Maples stood over a thousand feet high, their trunks thicker than castles, their branches stretching toward one another over the vast expanse of woodland. Below them, deciduous and pine foliage mixed in a clutter of bark, leaf and needle, many of the trees several-hundred-feet tall themselves, but all dwarfed by the black-barked towers of the maples. The massive trees were separated by distances of half a mile, yet their branches created an uninterrupted canopy over the forest, blanketing the land in a green ceiling.

“The nymph Life Giver, Ray Dawnbark made those trees four-thousand years ago,” I found myself saying. “They were but saplings then, but they never got sick, and they never stopped growing. Fire wouldn’t scorch them, and wind wouldn’t topple them, so they remained, and grew to giants over the millennia.”

“Those are some big fucking trees,” Lucilla said, summarizing my statement with the eloquence only she could muster.

Torondi paddled us across the lake, away from the Terondia River outlet, and toward the stream that entered Arbortus. The entrance of the nymph realm bore no sign or markings, but the shadow of the canopy. Its ceiling stretched so high that it seemed more like a second sky than a covering; low clouds obscured its leafy reaches in some places, and few birds breached its heights. The sun didn’t shine through it, but seemed to filter past the leaves, bathing the world in a green hue. The massive branches of the Great Maples arched over us and connected their tips, creating a cathedralic hall of immense proportion. Below the expanse of green sky, the world was teeming with life. Insects of a million varieties buzzed and called; birds of the thousands chirped, cawed and screeched; squirrels squeaked, deer flitted shyly through the brush, bear roared, and a valkyrie stood watching us.

“Holy shit!” Lucilla gasped. “Is that a valkyrie?!”

The majestic winged-woman stood hundreds of feet above us, perched atop a branch and looking down on us as we passed beneath her.

“She’s a long way from home,” I said, gazing up at her. “I wonder which peak she hales from?”

“She’d be from Iona,” Drask said, raising a fist to the woman, a salute she did not return, “pure-white wings mark her as one from the highest peak. Those from Ofan have streaks of gold in their wings, and those from Breyta have streaks of silver.”

“Why is she all the way out here?” I asked. “Her homeland is on the other side of the world!”

“They’ve been venturing out a lot more lately,” Drask said. “When I was a boy, you’d be lucky if you saw one flying off the Gratoran Wall in a year. Before Torondi and I left for Terondia, we saw three or four of them coming off the Wall per week, sometimes more. A few orc tribes started setting up nets in the Droktin Pass, trying to catch a prize.”

“That’s awful!” I exclaimed.

“These are the people you’re trying to help,” Lucilla said in an I-told-you-so tone of voice.

“Every group has bad apples,” Drask said dismissively. “Legend has it that one nation kidnapped seven-hundred children based on the word of an old man, and then proceeded to experiment on them for the next thirteen years. Some even say they did interspecies sexual experimentation, just to see what would happen. Some even have the audacity to say that the princess of that nation participated in the experiments herself! But that can’t be true, can it? What kind of savages would do such a thing?”

Lucilla stuck her tongue out at Drask’s smug grin. Torondi continued paddling through the quiet stream, the drip and splash of his paddle a gentle constant as the midmorning sun changed to afternoon. We stopped when the light of dusk shown dimly through the green sky, and set up camp at a clearing within the root structure of a Great Maple. The roots were massive, thick growths of wood with a diameter of forty feet, their girths dwarfing the height of many nearby trees. Looking directly up from the base of a Great Maple was a dizzying experience. The true enormity of the tree couldn’t be grasped until you stared up the length of its trunk, watching as it narrowed to impossible heights, then branched into a network of limbs that loomed over you for thousands of feet. I was considered a god to many people, but looking at this great permanent fixture of life, I felt like absolutely nothing.

“It would be best if you covered yourself,” I heard Drask say to Lucilla. “The nymphs aren’t really Creationists; they just worship The Life Giver. The Earth Former is considered lesser, and the Heat Bringer is considered by some, to be evil.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Fire,” Torondi said, pointing at me, “wood,” he said, pointing at the trees.

“Oh,” I replied, feeling a shiver run up my spine.

That evening we did not build a fire, but we wouldn’t have needed it for light. Trillions of bioluminescent fungi lit the world in an ethereal green glow from the hovels in the ground, to the highest reaches of the canopy. It was as though the forest were a magnificent ballroom, and the fungi were torches that lined its expanse. The haunting lights spiraled the lengths of the Great Maples, shown along the branches that arched above and littered the forest floor. Lightning bugs and fireflies flitted this way and that, contributing to the other-worldly illumination with green blazes in the air. I nestled my body next to Lucilla’s and gazed up at the marvel, neither of us speaking, but simply watching with wonderous stares. The lights began to distort in my waning eyes, and drowsiness took its hold on my mind. I heard the blissful sounds of yawns from my comrades, and the nestling of bodies making beds of the earth. I let my head rest against the rising chest of my love, and watched the lights glisten and blur into shapeless stars before my closing eyes.

When I awoke, the world had changed. The earthly green of the bioluminescence was now an orgy of pinks and reds, alighting the dark forest in a passionate hue. I gasped at the amazing sight, and upon my inhalation, something changed. Tingles radiated outward from my body, alighting my flesh in pleasant fire, and stoking the flames within my nethers. Every motion of my body became a struggle of sensuality, every nerve felt like it stood on edge. Viscous wetness dripped between my rubbing thighs, and sweet heat burned from my shallow breaths. I found myself fascinated by the curves of Lucilla’s body, and I ran my hand along them with gentle avarice.

Heat Bringer, a soft voice whispered from the forest, come to me.

The voice was a caress, a brush of tickling lips against the tender places of my mind. It was not a command, but a suggestion, and it was hardly a suggestion I wanted to refuse. I left my sleeping lover, and followed the sweet sound. The voice beckoned me through proud groves and serene ponds, guiding me along a path of massive twisting maple roots. The roots seemed to grow denser as I walked, overlapping each other, creating huge bridges of black wood that arced and weaved a hundred feet from the ground. They snarled together and then coalesced, merging to a single point; a tree. A cherry blossom tree, perfect and beautiful, its trunk made of the spiraling roots of its gargantuan neighbors, its canopy a mosaic of iridescent reds. White light pulsed from its trunk, shooting tendrils of energy into the network of roots that surrounded it. It beat like… like a heart. Like the heart of the forest. The trunk opened along a slit, revealing a pink glow from its depths. I became dimly aware that what I was doing was insane, but I didn’t care. The voice sung its soft melody into my mind, and I listened, and walked with a blissful smile curving my lips.

My tunic was stifling and constricting, so I let it fall from my body. My shoes felt alien on my feet, so I kicked them off. I felt the bark against my soles, and the humid air gently caressing my body, and it felt right. This place of primal nature would not suffer the pointless binds of society. I stepped through the threshold, my heart thrumming pleasantly and my mind open and curious. The walls of the cavern were pink and soft, fleshy in their texture and warmth. I ran a hand along a surface, and felt a gentle pulse beating deep beneath it. The place should have been bizarre and frightening, but I only felt a sense of safety, comfort and strange familiarity. This wasn’t the heart of the forest; this was the womb.

Welcome, Heat Bringer, the voice said, echoing from all around me, soothing and sweet as a mother’s whisper, it has been long since one of your kind has walked upon my roots.

“What are you?” I asked, strangely unafraid

I am called Passion, Passion said, the reverbed tenor of her voice growing clearer, and I am the seed of Arbortus. I awaken with the spring rains, and bring about the mating season. Every midnight after the vernal equinox, I release the pheromonic spores of the fungi, seeping the land in my fertility and lust, and alighting Arbortus in a fire of my own. I hope you enjoyed the spectacle.

“It was beautiful,” I said, relaxing on the warm floor in a sprawl of uncharacteristic languor, “but how did you know that I was here?”

I see through all eyes that are born beneath my canopy, Passion said, her voice sounding as though it were getting closer, and I’ve been watching you with great interest.

“Why?” I asked.

You excite me, the voice chuckled. I am vast and timeless, immortal in every sense of the word, except for one weakness…

The echoing nature of the voice sharpened until it was a singular crystal sound. Its bearer stepped before me, as beautiful as the forest she was a part of. She was a nymph, but not like one I’d ever seen. Her skin was a pristine canvas of golden-bronze dotted with freckles that sparkled like diamonds. Her hair was a flowing curtain of scarlet, brighter than my own, and from its passionate mane protruded black antlers in place of ivory horns. Her body was a display of curvaceous fertility; thighs that barely separated at their peak, hips presenting glutes of creasing suppleness, and a soft abdomen shadowed by doming breasts, whose pale pink nipples contrasted the rich tone of her sparkling flesh. Her face was sculpted, freckled with diamonds, and bore lush lips, a pointed nose and a pronounced jawline. Her eyes were almost unnaturally large, their irises were golden instead of the nymph pine-green, and their sclera was purple instead of white.

“…you.” She smiled warmly at me, “You are my mortality, Heat Bringer. The fire that could end me, the flame that could scorch my green lands black.”

“I would never do that,” I said, watching as Passion stepped toward me with impossibly fluid grace.

“Maybe, Heat Bringer, maybe,” she said softly as she slid her golden form next to me, “but you are still a threat to me.”

“Are you going to kill me?” I asked, oddly unconcerned for my own safety. Passion laughed a sweet, sonorous laugh. It was such a disarming sound that I couldn’t help but laugh along with it.

“No, child,” Passion said, smiling sweetly, like a mother to her foolish daughter. “I am the construct of the Life Giver, and I do not take what has been given.”

“Are you a Sentient?” I asked, finally feeling a tickle of fear.

“You surprise me,” Passion smiled broadly, “most who know of Sentients call them astral beings, but you know their true origin.”

“I read a lot,” I said quietly, the tickle of fear becoming more pronounced. Passion placed a hand on my shoulder, and the fear disappeared into gentle warmth.

“I would have been Sentient, had Ray Dawnbark not tied me to this place,” Passion said, gesturing broadly over the pink surroundings. “He tethered my essence to every root and vine in the forest, and made me its eternal caretaker. It took every ounce of life within the great expanse of Arbortus to keep me as I am, and still, I must create new growth to preserve myself. It is why I release the spores every spring, so that those beneath my canopy are compelled to create new life. It is why you are not listening to me right now, and instead staring unabashedly at my breasts.”

The melody of her voice was a sweet thing, but the lyrics of her song were lost to my ears. Passion’s sparkling body radiated its enticing warmth just inches from my body, her dew-glistened skin wafted its sweet floral aroma into my nostrils, her beautiful form splayed lazily before my eyes, every curve a feast to behold. She cupped my chin with a gentle hand, and brought my gaze to her smiling golden irises.

“I will make a lover of you, Heat Bringer,” Passion whispered, each word seeming to melt like honey into my ear, “for that is how I deal with threats. I will offer you endless bliss and pleasure, and you will remain here with me in paradise, sating your desires until you pass from this world.”

The pink hue of the cavern began to deepen into a passionate red, and the fleshy walls began to leak with a clear viscous fluid. I felt my breaths grow hot and heavy in my chest, my body tingle with soft fire along every nerve, and my mind melt into a catatonic state of carnality. I moved with a languidness that was foreign to me, shifting with gelatinous motions possessed by some untamable lust. The fluid dripped from the ceiling onto my naked form, seeping its warmth over my body, oiling my flesh in a glistening aura. Passion rose to her knees, dropped her head behind her shoulders, and let the nectar shower her; dribbling its clear molasses upon her face, glossing and matting her red hair, oozing down her breasts, and sheening her golden-bronze skin in a layer of lust. She slid her oiled body atop mine, every touch brimming with interminable seduction, every move a graceful display. She slithered down my slickened torso, her tongue tracing a line along the curve of my breast, over my erect nipple, through my abdomen and between my legs. Her golden irises gleamed from their purple orbs as her lush lips found the dripping petals of my love. Her tongue slipped through my blushing folds and pushed tenderly along the vulnerable stretch of my ceiling, permeating aching pleasure into my depths. I moaned a delectable tone, biting my lip and arching my back, moving with a sultriness that was unnatural to me, my mind compelled by some unquenchable avarice.

I have sons for you to enjoy, Heat Bringer, Passion’s ethereal voice echoed as her mouth tasted me.

The walls pulsed and tremored, their fleshy membranes growing thin to reveal their spawn. Nymph males, all strong, all purple-eyed and golden-skinned materialized from the depths of the womb. Their forms were sheened with the fluid that soaked mine, and they walked toward me with arousal in their eyes and bodies. Somewhere in my mind, it occurred to me that I was about to lose my virginity to a spirit of the forest, inside a giant vagina. The absurdity of it was lost in my consciousness to the thundering drums of my insatiable desire, and I accepted my situation with blissful readiness. I watched them approach me with eyes half-mast, licking my lips, moaning my need and pleasure as Passion’s female form consumed me; the wetness of her mouth mingling with the wetness of my lust, her tongue lapping the secreting arousal that dripped from my swollen petals and comingled with the nectar that oozed upon us from the fleshy floor and ceiling.

I shared my mouth with one man, and then the next, marveling at the taste of a masculine kiss, feeling their muscles pressing against my delicate form. They surrounded me, their aggressive heat melting against my body, their curved shafts throbbing above me, a veritable buffet of sexual organs. I took one into my hand, running my fingers covetously along it, eyeing it with a hunger I’d never known before. I stroked it, savored the pulsating nature of its heat, and then brought it to my lips. My tongue tasted him, my lips sucked him, I sheened him with my saliva and hummed my smiling lechery up at him. He entangled a gentle hand in my hair, guiding me back and forth, but not forcing me. I felt warm hard chest-muscle pressing against my back, and tender hands cupping me about the fat of my glutes. I was lifted upward by strong arms, Passion’s mouth rising with my body, unrelenting in her lustful consumption, and then I was slowly let down. I felt a pressure against the aperture of my sinful hole, and a felicitous throbbing permeating from the source. I unwound my fingers from the man I was tasting, and reached beneath myself, gripped the wet succulent meat of my ass, and spread. The nectar that covered us all prepared me for his entrance, and he stretched open me painlessly, pushing through my resistances with tender ease, and penetrating inch after inch of his wonderful cock through my anus and deep into my hungry channel. My humming tone grew in pitch, my shoulders flexed backward slightly, and my spine straightened as my pale flesh squished into his hard, tan pelvis. I was filled slickly to my bottom, and I marveled upon the intimacy of this defilement, my thin membranous sleeve wrapped about his reaming shaft that bulged so grotesquely, so beautifully into my filthy hole. He thrusted gently into me, not exerting me, not hurting me, but driving with a methodical sensuality, violating me tenderly with the lubricated length of his manhood.

I was a goddess on a perverse throne of men, the subject of adoration, the object of worship. My male partners were subservient, loyal, and gentle; bending to my every whim, anticipating my every need, treating me with the reverence I deserved. Two mouths found my nipples, and sucked tenderly upon the nodes, bringing their erectness to a pleasing ache. The man beneath me pushed into my anus with gradual motions, allowing me to savor every bump and vein, every subtle change in girth, every inch of his depth. A pair of strong hands massaged my shoulders, comforting me in my lust, loosening my already languid body into a gelatinous sprawl of relaxation. I engrossed myself in the hedonism, reveled in the excess. I entangled my fingers in the hair of the men nursing from me and pressed them deeper to my bosom. I rotated my lips around the man in my mouth and smiled as his face slackened in pleasure. His delightful cock began to pulse and heave, and I milked him for all he was worth, sucking until my blushing cheeks went gaunt. His baritone groans were sweet music to my ears, and the eruption of his climax was sweet candy on my tongue. I giggled delightedly as he poured his delicious filth into my mouth, and I stared into his purple eyes as I swallowed every, last, drop.
Passion’s mouth was glistening with the excretion of my femininity; strands of viscous fluid snapping from her lush lips as her tongue ran over them, tasting the remnants of me while she guided a man to my awaiting slit. I smiled at the man through parted lips, moaning the song of my tender sodomy as I beckoned him with lustful eyes. Passion guided the man by the shaft, and he gently parted the meat of my thighs, splaying my legs lazily off to the sides. He pushed his tip slowly forward, and my petals creased inwardly with him, my virgin tightness causing my lips to indent with his penetration. There was a second of discomfort, only a moment when a pained whimper brushed my lips. The moment passed, and the man glided into me, his shaft amply greased with the nectar I oozed upon it. His girth moved alongside his brethren, squishing my fleshy division between them, electrifying the nerve-covered swath of me that separated my womanhood from my sinful channel. His crotch pressed against my pelvis, and my head fell backward as a moan of pure delight coursed from my mouth.

The orgy was one of sensuality, of graceful motions shifting to a soft cadence, of dripping lust, of bodies glazed with amorous honey, of saturated warmth mingling along curves slick with our secretion. The passionate hue of the place bathed us in its pink and red tones, gleaming its color from our glistening wet flesh. Tongues found vulnerable places to taste, lips found tender nodes to suck, mouths hummed and moaned, whined subtle cries and whimpered decadent pleasure. I was encased in a bed of hot bodies, all moving to please me, all writhing to the gentle thrusts that pierced me. Passion stood behind me, her sparkling complexion gleaming with the fluid that covered us all, her mouth panting soft euphoria as the man massaging my shoulders tasted the inside of his mother’s rectum. She laced her elegant fingers into my wet hair, and sung a soothing song into my ear as I shifted back and forth, moving slickly across the man in my ass, my legs spread wide for the man in my pussy. She hovered her slit over my face, not demanding me to please her, but offering me to taste her. I accepted. I wrapped my moaning lips around the delicate petals of her erogeneity, and tasted the flavor of her. The movements of my mouth came unnaturally natural to me; an experienced tongue which had no experience, knowing lips which knew nothing at all. I didn’t worry about how I’d learned these skills, or why they’d come to me, but simply did as my instincts prompted, and poured my desire into the wet heat between Passion’s golden legs. I unraveled my hands from the hair of the men drinking from my breasts, and sunk my fingers into the succulent meat of Passion’s glutes, spreading her open for the man eating her ass, and allowing the sweet froth of her slit to drip into my consuming mouth.

The orgasm that came wasn’t a violent, wrenching thing, but a swell, a rising of feeling that ballooned within my depths. The motions of my body didn’t become urgent, but more impassioned, more purposeful. My back arched subtly against the man taking my anus, pressing my stomach against the men sucking from my breasts, and pushing my head against the man consuming Passion’s ass. Hands held me all along my form; gripping my thighs, cupping my glutes, sliding along my abdomen, squeezing my breasts, and massaging my shoulders. They caressed me from the outside as my climax rose from the inside, compelled outward from my nethers by the gentle drives of the men piercing me, the lubrication of their defilement spilling from my pleasured holes. I shifted and squirmed in my bed of bodies, and they held and supported me in whatever position my lust compelled me to move. My nose pressed into Passion’s wet taint as the feeling began to take hold of me, and the moaning tenor of my voice became a soft cry that waned into her dripping depths. My hips tilted forward, my pelvis dropped between my spread legs, and my muffled euphoria sang from my occupied mouth as I orgasmed. I felt hot seed rush into my channels, filling me with molten felicity, melting into the tender flesh of my erogeneity. My virgin womb was saturated with it, my rectum was filled with it, and my mouth tasted the fountain of Passion’s ascension.

I laid satisfied and intoxicated, breathing in the hormone-soaked air, and exhaling sweet tenors of bliss. The bed of men shifted, picking me up gently, changing positions, and then lowering me back down, their slick bodies hot with the radiance of my flesh, new members standing erect and throbbing, waiting to please me. Passion sprawled her body next to mine, smiling affectionately into my eyes as she made furniture of her own sons; spreading her legs and separating her glutes, sighing as she was defiled in both holes as I was. I smiled into her eyes and caressed her softly along the cheek, moaning in congruence with her as we were taken simultaneously, joining in a lust that would never end. I kissed her from across my bridge of bodies, and made love to her sons as our tongues entwined between our rapacious wet lips.

LUCILLA

We’d searched for a week. I knew she was alive by the power that still thrummed alight beneath my skin, but it was a faint thing. She hadn’t tried to draw from me once. Hell, she hadn’t so much as stubbed her toe in the last week judging by the dim light of my power. I believed Julia could survive on her own, but I doubted she would have done so without even the slightest bit of stress. Could she have been drugged? Was she in the back of a barred-carriage to Terondia, stuffed to the brim with opium? I pushed the thoughts from my mind; they were of no use to me, not when facing the forest.

For seven days, we’d slogged through marshes, hacked through groves, and waded through streams. The first night without Julia, we sat in solemn silence, three people in an incomplete circle, staring numbly at the iridescent greens of the forest. The shimmering tones turned to garish pinks and reds before our eyes, and the sober people we were changed to carnal, hedonistic things, engaging in the needs of our bodies without any heed for the world. The exhaustion we suffered through the next day was a hard lesson, and we learned to find sleep before midnight the next evening. Arbortus was vast beyond comprehension, and the towering trunks that once dazzled me, now only seemed to loom threateningly. Every patch of forest felt like every other, every attempt at landmarking our location was in vain, every crook and hovel seemed a clone of the last. We were rested road-fairing travelers on day one, and haggard wild creatures by day seven. My hair was matted and covered in filth, my skin was clammy and scratched in a hundred places, my feet were sore and blistered. I’d ceased my royal bitching after day two, not due to Torondi and Drask’s annoyed growls, but because I was too fucking tired to talk. By the seventh day, none of us said anything at all, until Torondi broke the silence.

“Stop,” Torondi said, holding up a splayed hand. I halted behind him, and Drask stopped behind me. Torondi cocked his head, inclining his pointed ear to the sky and listening with one eye closed. It was then that I heard it: nothing. The constant chirping of birds, the buzzing of insects, the squeak of squirrels had all ceased. The bustling soundtrack of the forest was muted to a tense silence, with only the whistling wind through rustling leaves to break it. Torondi slowly reached over his shoulder, and unslung his bow. Drask put a hand on my arm and guided me to crouch in the foliage before unslinging his bow from his back. They kept their heads low, their backs straight, and their knees bent level with their hips as they moved in the underbrush. They stopped suddenly, postures stiff and unmoving, hands deftly nocking bowstrings. They kept their loaded weapons tensed and ready as their heads swiveled on static bodies, searching with the keen, hunter-eyes of the elves.

An explosion tore through the silence, ripping the earth from the ground, showering the world in blackened soil and splintered bark. Torondi rolled to his left, barely dodging the kinetic blast that cratered the ground before him. Drask dove to his right, summersaulted in a display of athleticism, and then loosed his arrow into the brush. A scream of pain sounded from nowhere, and Drask nocked another arrow just in time to be blown into red mist. The remnants of the man seemed to dissipate in the air, blowing like crimson dust and mixing with the upheaval of black soil. I screamed and fell backward, my eyes replaying the shocking terror over and over again, unable to process what happened, unable to fully believe what I just saw. Torondi let out a sound so agonized it would be seared into my memory forever. He loosed arrow after arrow, tumbling this way and that, rolling to his feet, reaching behind himself, grabbing a shaft, notching it, and loosing all in one motion. One scream sounded from the foliage, and then another, and another. Kinetic spheres were hurled at the dark elf, cratering the ground around him, blasting debris into the air, and he rolled between them, firing with every stop, emptying his quiver into the forest, roaring at the tops of his lungs until his body separated into a million pieces.

I sat dumbly in the brush, my heart thundering in my chest, my mouth agape, and my eyes wide. Bald-headed high-elves stepped from the greenery, their brows shining with astral power, their gazes fixated on me. I fell backward, kicking at the earth, scrambling vainly into the forest on scraped hands and knees. Tears stung my eyes, thorns scratched my cloak, twigs lashed at my face. I made it fifty yards before strong hands grabbed me, and flung me to the ground. They stood over me, five of them, their pates gleaming in the green light, their faces impassive masks of coldness. One of them reached down, and pulled my hood from my head, and all of their expressions widened.

“Princess Lucilla?” one of them gasped.

“You’re alive?” the second exclaimed.

I huddled on the ground, trying to keep my cloak over my entire body, trying to hide what I’d become. It didn’t work. My cloak was in tatters, it barely covered my knees, and they saw; they saw it all. One of them reached down and tore the shredded cloth from me, leaving me naked and terrified, lying in fetal weakness.

“You’ve bound with her,” the third of them whispered.

“We cannot let her live!” the fourth said, raising his palm toward me.

“Are you insane?!” hissed the fifth. “This is the princess!”

“The emperor cannot bind with the Heat Bringer if she is already bound,” the fourth one said. “He will not need to know; everyone already thinks she’s dead.”

“He killed Telavia for less,” the third one said, nodding.

“It’s for the good of the realm,” the second one concurred.

“It’s a necessary evi—”

There was a whoosh, a flash of white, and a fading scream as the mage disappeared. The remaining four jerked their heads up, narrowing their eyes, searching with twitching neck movements like crows scouting a road. Their astral melds gleamed from their brows, the ethereal being within them extrapolating every piece of life in their range, leaving no stone unturned, leaving no creature unseen. Whoosh, thump, scream. Another mage disappeared in a flash of white, torn from the earth as though he weighed nothing at all, the only evidence left of him being the fading echo of his death throes. The other three were panicking now, ducking at every sound, their narrowed eyes widening in terror.

“What the fuck was that?!” hissed one of them.

“Can you sense it?” whispered a second.

“I can’t see shit! Why can’t I see it? What the fu—”

Then, everyone saw it; saw her. The valkyrie split the mage down the middle with a double-headed axe, cleaving him so cleanly that his two halves stood in momentary stasis before separating and falling aside. A mage raised his hand to blow her away, but his hand wasn’t there anymore. He hardly had time to scream at the stump before his head blasted from his shoulders. The last mage hurled a kinetic attack at the warrior, and she folded her wings before her, absorbed the lethal shock with ease, and unfurled her span in a fury of white, redirecting the attack back at its bearer, and blowing his bloodied pieces high into the canopy, decorating the pine branches with ornaments of his gore.

She stood six-feet tall; her warrior’s body encased in tight-fitting leather armor and framed with broad shoulders, an ample bust, a muscled torso and wide hips baring thick, toned glutes. Her blonde hair was braided intricately about her crown, and flowed down her shoulders in ropes of gold. Her face was cast with a brow that shadowed her fearsome blue eyes, lush lips that creased into a grim frown, and a nose that broadened into a pronounced bridge before drawing seamlessly back into her brow. She was past her youth, as exhibited by the faint lines on her forehead, but she was still one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen. She folded the fourteen-foot span of her wings, and knelt before me, her hard expression growing soft and loving. She placed a tender hand on my cheek, and I felt hot tears pool in her palm. I curled into her body, and cried, venting my horror and grief, sobbing my realization that the world wasn’t what I thought it was.

That evening, the valkyrie bathed me in the stream, tended my wounds, and fed me. She adorned me with a cloak of her own, and hemmed it at the skirt and arms so that it wouldn’t drag. I didn’t speak to her, and she didn’t speak to me, but she hummed a soft mournful tune as she nurtured me, and its lullaby melody soothed my troubled heart and panicked mind. We sat upon the roots of a Great Maple, watching the twilight dwindle into dark, and the glowing spectacle of Arbortus come into view. She took out a flask, took a deep swig, and then handed it to me. It was a hearty liquor, and it burned in all the right ways. I smiled a small grateful smile, and handed it back to her.

“What’s your name?” I finally asked.

“Freydis Skyborne,” Freydis said, her voice surprisingly soft, her eyes watching the river.

“Thank you, Freydis,” I said with painful earnestness, “for saving me.”

“It is you who is my salvation, Bound One,” Freydis said, looking at me with adoring eyes. “You are holy, a sacred person to my people. I have oaths I must speak to you, but they are long and ponderous, and you are obviously tired.” Freydis dropped her head and looked at the river again, an expression of shame lingering on her face. “I am sorry I could not save your brethren, Bound One.”

“Don’t blame yourself for that,” I replied, putting a hand on her back. “What could you have done?”

“A lot of things,” Freydis said, her jaw working tightly, “but all I saw was a squabble between elven factions, and I decided not to intervene. I apologize for my cowardice; I could have saved them.”

“Hey now,” I said, sitting beside her and putting my arm around her broad shoulders, a task that was jarring in its ergonomics, “I don’t blame you. How could anyone blame someone for not risking their life for a fight they had nothing to do with?” I looked up at her handsome features, and waited until her blue gaze met mine, “You’re my hero,” I smiled, “and I’m eternally grateful.”

Her expression softened again, and she returned my smile. I nestled my body against hers, rested my cheek against her soft breast, and curved my form into the bow of her torso. She stiffened, unsure of the situation, and then placed a tentative arm around me, and relaxed. It was a platonic embrace, one of a protector and her charge, and in that moment, it was the exact kind of contact I needed. I needed to feel protected.

“Why are you so far from home, Freydis?” I asked.

“I’m looking for my daughter.”

“Sounds like there’s a story there,” I said, looking up at her, “if you’re willing to tell it.”

“My daughter, Astrid,” Freydis said, clearing her throat, “is a bone-headed young woman. Nine days ago, she charged off Iona, convinced beyond all doubt that she would find the Earth Former, the patron god of our peak. She was immediately netted by orcs in the Droktin Pass.”

I felt a ping of sadness as Drask’s words came flooding into my mind, and the tears began to film on my eyes. I brushed them away before Freydis could see them.

“That’s awful,” I muttered.

“It worked in her favor,” Freydis sighed, shifting against the tree she was resting on, “as all things seem to with Astrid. I raced after her once I heard the news of her capture, and I found the slave cart she’d been hauled in, melded to a massive cube of obsidian that could’ve only been made by one man.”

“Did it have a fist sticking out of it?” I asked. Freydis raised her eyebrows, and nodded. “My father took me to see the exact thing,” I chuckled sadly, “small world.”

“It sounds like you have a story to tell me, Bound One,” Freydis said, her eyes searching.

“I’m Princess Lucilla Fritari of the elven empire and my father is an insane tyrant,” I replied tersely, not wanting to tread on still-open wounds, “that’s pretty much it. Please continue.”

Freydis puffed out her cheeks, her eyebrows raised. She seemed to mull that revelation over for a moment, then inclined her head, nodded, and continued.

“I searched far and wide for Astrid and the Earth Former until I came upon more evidence of the god’s activities on the Gratoran Wall;” Freydis frowned for a moment, “a statue of my own daughter, arched in the throes of great lust, complete with the act of her fornication carved perfectly between her stone legs.”

“Sounds like they became pretty fast friends,” I giggled. Freydis did not share in my amusement.

“The Iona Guard has vows that prohibit such things,” Freydis said. “A winged-warrior is to have sex only once in her life, and only to bear a daughter. We believe that putting oneself beneath another for pleasure is a weakness, and a warrior cannot afford weakness.”

“But how many warriors get a chance to sleep with a god?” I laughed. “Isn’t there some clause in your contract that makes exceptions for a divine fuck?”

Freydis eyed me with a stern frown, and then broke into a smile.

“I suppose you are right, Bound One,” she chuckled. “Were I a younger woman raging with lust, I’m sure I would’ve fallen prey to the temptation of bedding a divinity. Still,” she smiled slyly to me, “I’m not exactly pleased that everyone southwest of the Droktin Pass gets to see a statue of my daughter getting plowed.”

I burst into laughter; my mirth unusually strong in the wake of the day’s events. I laughed until my stomach hurt and tears welled in my eyes, and Freydis’s sonorous laugh accompanied mine. We shook together until the sighs of dying merriment fell from our mouths, and Freydis continued her story.

“So I traveled south along the Gratoran Wall until I came upon a great heap of smoldering ruins,” Freydis’s mirth left her, and her frown creased her cheeks once again. “Their wreckage is the reason I’ve traveled to Arbortus. The Earth Former, it appears, has some quarrel with the nymphs, as he levelled their entire colony in the Tentigo Tropics.”

“Holy shit,” I whispered, feeling my heart drop, “that’s terrible.”

“It is a terrible thing,” Freydis nodded. “I worry after my daughter, but if she has sworn her allegiance to him, which I’m sure she has, then there is nothing to be done. I can only wait for her and her charge to come to Arbortus, if his quarrel with the nymphs extends this far. If not, then I have no idea where they’ve gone.”

“Would you follow him?” I asked, “The Earth Former? If he demanded your servitude, would you bend the knee?”

“If I am unsworn, then yes,” Freydis replied, “I would gladly bend the knee.”
“But he’s a monster!” I exclaimed. “He slaughtered an entire colony!”

“The gods are still very young,” Freydis said, “and prone to emotionally-charged mistakes. The morality of divinity cannot be compared to the morality of the common man; it would be like comparing your morality with that of an ant’s. Where a normal man might get into a fist fight, a god might destroy a town. It is up to institutions like the Iona Guard to not only serve and obey, but to also advise and guide, to mold the adolescent gods into adults of morals and principles. Astrid is an ideologue, a foolish girl at times, but a good one; I am sure she is working tirelessly to teach the Earth Former how to become a good man.”

“Julia is a good woman,” I said, “and she doesn’t need to be told not to kill hundreds of people. She couldn’t even kill to save her own life.”

“That is your bind?” Freydis asked. “The Holy One is called Julia? She is a woman?”

“Why yes, she is,” I smirked at Freydis. “What do your codes say about lesbianism?”

“It is forbidden, obviously. We are a mountain colony of women, and I’ve already told you of our codes pertaining to sex. We wouldn’t get anything done if we could lie with each other.”

“You and Julia are going to get along just fine,” I snorted. “She’s an ex-nun, and she just loves her vows. She has to pray away her transgressions first-thing every morning, even before she takes a piss. At the rate she’s been sinning lately, she’ll be prostrating until she shits herself.”

“She sounds like a strong woman,” Freydis mused, nodding approvingly. “The Heat Bringer is the matron god of the Breytans, but that doesn’t mean two clans can’t be sworn. If Astrid swears to the Earth Former, and I swear to the Heat Bringer, then the chances of war between clans and gods goes down significantly, and divine war must be avoided at all costs. Do you think she will have me?” Freydis asked hopefully.

“Oh, sure,” I laughed, “but if you call her ‘Your Holiness’ it might kill her with embarrassment, so please, by all means, worship her to death.” My laughter waned in my throat as reality sunk back in, “Of course,” I said quietly, “we have to find her first.”

JULIA

One of Passion’s daughters served me wine, another served me chocolates. One of her sons massaged my back with stimulating oils, the other’s face was consumed by the pale bulge of my cheeks, enveloping his nose and mouth as his tongue slid between my options. I didn’t know how long I’d lived in paradise, but it felt like forever. My memory was a hazy thing, filled with fractured images and blurred faces, and it was uncomfortable to try recalling it, so I didn’t. Why would I exert myself with the past? Everything in Passion’s world was about the present, and she filled the present with excess. That was the theme of my life now; decadence. Excess without consequence, sin without punishment. I hardly knew who I was anymore, and I hardly cared. It didn’t matter; all that mattered was the feeling of now, the present desires, the pleasure of the immediate.

“Have you ever wondered…” Passion prompted, her golden eyes staring from the tops of her purple sclera as she laid on her stomach in front of me, indulging in the same activities that I was, “…about the pleasure of a man?”

“Hmm?” I smiled drowsily, groaning in lazy pleasure as the man beneath me wrapped his lips around my wetted rim, and pushed his tongue inside. “I don’t think I have to wonder about the pleasures of a man, Passion; as you can see.”

“I mean the pleasures a man feels,” Passion said, pausing to stick out her tongue so that one of her daughters could place a truffle upon it, “the pleasure he garners in lust.”

“I’m sure every woman has,” I giggled as my man’s tongue rolled around my insides, sheening my filthy channel with his spit, “but judging by the reactions of men and women during sex, I’d say our gender got the better deal.”

“What if you could feel both pleasures?” Passion asked, eyes gleaming. “The pleasures of a man and a woman, simultaneously?”

“That almost sounds like a suggestion,” I smirked, biting my lip as the man’s tongue curled and slid along my fleshy walls, “do you have something in mind?”

Passion beckoned her youngest daughter over to her. As with all of Passion’s children, this girl had eyes of purple, irises of pink, and antlers in place of horns. She laid down before her mother and spread her legs, perching up on her elbows and watching Passion with excitement gleaming from her youthful teen face. Passion took an indulgent moment to lick chocolate from her fingers, and then lowered her wine-stained lips to her daughter’s crotch, and wrapped them around her clit. The girl gasped, and then groaned a strained, exerted whine. She began thrusting in the air, slowly at first, but then increasing her pace to a fervent pump, her tones turning to cries of delight, her mother’s head glued to her crotch and grinning as it sucked from her nethers. The girl fell to her back, planted her heels into the ground, and thrashed back and forth as she thrusted, forcing Passion to anchor her hands to the girl’s petite glutes to keep her face in place. The girl was sobbing now, shifting wantonly, driving as though her body were doing it without her permission. Finally, her head reared back, and an exaltation of pure joy flowed from her trembling lips. The girl’s thrusts eased to gentle pushes, and her cry waned to a violated whimper as her hips descended, revealing the new organ sheened with her mother’s spit. It was overflowing with cum, spilling like lava after the eruption, causing the girl to moan insistently as her crotch pooled with it. Her older sisters came forward and lapped her nectar greedily, and the moaning whimpers of the girl softened to gentle gasps when her cock finally stopped orgasming, and began to droop onto her sticky pelvis.

“I can change you, Heat Bringer,” Passion said, giving her youngest daughter a parting kiss on the cock before crawling languidly toward me. “I can enhance you to your liking, create a beautiful creature of lust from your canvas.”

“Yes,” I whispered, gawking with wide eyes at the cock that lay between the girl’s legs, staring at it with envy, “change me.”

“How would you like to be changed?” Passion smiled as I raised myself to my knees before her, my servants leaving me.

“Your skin,” I said, running my hand along her shoulder, admiring the diamond freckles that sparkled from her. “I want to shine like a diamond as you do.”

“I can do that,” Passion whispered gently as she guided me to my back, “what else?”

“My breasts,” I said, trailing dangling fingers over my bosom, “I want your sons to drink milk from them.”

“I can do that as well,” Passion smiled, lowering her lush lips to my left nipple, “anything else?”

“Make me like your youngest,” I whispered pleadingly as Passion’s lips began to suck from my breast, “give me the gift of a man!”

“As you wish, Heat Bringer,” Passion grinned back, and then resumed her nursing. Her lips drew my nipple from my breast, toying with its erectness until I moaned for her. She began to suckle from me like a babe; my node stretching in and out of her pursed mouth, her tongue teasing the tip, causing it to grow red with stimulation and wetness form from the tiny apertures. Soft whimpers slipped from my panting lips as the pleasure grew from my chest, my nipple starting to ache with pressure. Passion sucked with more avarice, stretching my nipple from my breast, causing my moan to escalate to a whining plea. She grabbed the succulent fat of my bust and gently squeezed, releasing the aching pressure, and causing warm milk to spill from Passion’s sucking lips. I giggled delightedly as she drank from me, and pressed her face closer to my breast, groaning maternal utterances of pleasure. My breast began to swell, its sloping nature changing to a vulgar dome, the nipple sticking outwardly even more as though pressed forward from within. Passion changed my other breast with the same sensuality, leaving my chest adorned with high full domes that jutted from their perches in gravity-defying fullness, their nipples leaking with want.

A fleshy orifice in the ceiling pulsed and dilated, growing a passionate red, and then opening. Clear fluid poured from it, dripping its molasses onto my face and running thickly down my neck, over my breasts, and across my abdomen. Tingles of pleasant warmth seeped into my flesh wherever it touched, and soon, every surface of me was alight with the sensation. Passion chuckled as I squirmed in it, bathed in it, tasted it. Twinkling gems began to form on my skin, little dots of white diamonds that reflected pink in the garish womb. They formed on the follicles of my mound, replacing the curly mat of red hair with a smooth canvas of jewels, seeming to point at the slit beneath them. They were sprinkled about my arms and legs, dotted my abdomen and breasts, and played across my necks and cheeks. I splayed out my limbs, admiring my new complexion, turning around and looking at the sparkles that now decorated my pale glutes, basking in the vanity of my new beauty.

Passion slid her body atop mine, seeping the warmth of her form along my sparkling curves. She shared her lips and tongue with me, and then moved lower, and lower. She stared at me from between my legs, her crimson hair tickling my thighs, her golden irises smirking from their purple depths. Her lush lips wrapped gently around my hood, and began to suck. I felt it immediately; not just the pleasure of her drawing my erogenous bead from my swollen petals, but something else. An aching, wonderful pleasure the likes of which I’d never experienced before. A ratcheting pressure within my pelvis, a boiling feeling that only grew the harder she sucked. She pinched her fingers together, and pushed a lubricated fist deep into my rectum. My head flew back, and I cried a sonorous tone of pure euphoria. There was something different about anal now, an additional wonderful… something. A pulsating organ deep within me that throbbed with the pressure that roiled in my depths, seeming to be at the very center of it. Passion’s fist rotated inside me, her fingers uncurled, and her fingertips rubbed gently against my new prostate. It was more than I could take. I began thrusting wildly into the air, compelled by instincts that did not belong to my gender. It was a rage of sorts, a manic need to be inside someone, but I didn’t have the parts for it. Not yet. Passion rotated her squished lips against my pelvis, sucking my clit into her mouth, pulling it relentlessly as she teased it with her tongue. The pressure in my pelvic floor increased to a maddening level, driving my mind into a manic haze of singular focus: to thrust, to penetrate, to come. The feeling suddenly surged forward, my new milk-maker gushing, lancing the pressure through my pelvis, toward my crotch, and out of my new cock.

It grew in Passion’s mouth, thick and veiny, long enough that the woman gagged around me as she tried to keep it all in. The pressure burst from its tip, and exploded into her throat, sending me screaming in manic delight as I thrusted wildly between her lips, smashing my pelvis into her face, defiling the pristine outline of her mouth with uncontrolled brutality. I held Passion’s face down by the antlers and laughed as her eyes rolled to purple; her mouth sucking whorishly, her throat constricting painfully. She reached between her legs and began desperately pleasing herself, compelled by my own fervent lust, possessed by my own desires. I came continuously, unloading spurt after spurt, thrusting with uncaring violence, punishing Passion with my masculinity. She hummed a scream around my cock, reveling in my brutish nature, swallowing for all she was worth. I held her face against my crotch, burying my entire length into her, pressing her nose into my pelvis, squishing her lips about my base, watching as her rolled-back eyes brimmed with tears of pain and pleasure. I forced her to drink the last of my orgasm as she gave herself one of her own, her body writhing behind her, wavering on trembling legs. The rage left me, the insatiable need faded, and the peaceful lust of paradise thrummed back into my mind. I let Passion go, and her eyes lolled forward. She pulled slowly, sucking so hard her cheeks stretched from her face, swallowing every drop I had to offer, revealing the astonishing full length of my new manhood.

“Sorry,” I smiled apologetically to Passion as her lips parted, strings of cum bridging my tip and her mouth, “I couldn’t control myself.”

“No woman can when she first experiences the heat of a man’s lust,” Passion smiled, licking my tip and running her delicate fingers down my length, pulling her fist from my ass and caressing my pussy. “It is a dangerous, brutish thing that can only be controlled with experience.”

“How do men not just… rape everything in sight?” I laughed, marveling at the throbbing nature of my new organ. “That was unbearable!”

“Do you not enjoy it?” Passion asked, a hint of worry in her voice, a shadow of concern etched across her beautiful face.

“I love it,” I chuckled, bringing Passion up to me, feeling her dripping folds deform against my cock as she passed over it, “what’s wrong?”

“I was worried that you might regret it,” she said almost bashfully, showing emotional vulnerability for the first time since we’d met. “I wouldn’t want you to think that I deformed you.”

“I think of it as an enhancement,” I grinned, trailing my hands down the soft muscles of her back, sliding my palms to the swell of her tan glutes. “It’s strange to see you uncertain of yourself.”

“You make me uncertain, Heat Bringer,” she smiled, sliding her oozing slit along my new length. “It’s an exciting feeling, but also a terrifying one.”

“Why do I make you feel uncertain?” I whispered as her thighs separated, allowing my raging heat to push inside her, taking my male virginity.

“I’m not sure,” Passion gasped as she inched herself down my length, the curve of her back deepening, “I haven’t felt like this since…”

She looked deeply into my eyes as our pelvises connected, as she took the last bit of me into her tight wet heat. Her head dropped onto my new breasts, and we took a breathless moment to savor the sensation. When her face raised to mine, her golden irises were glinting with affection, and her mouth was curved in an adoring smile. She kissed me there, but her kiss tasted different than all her others. There was a flavor of love in it.

“I don’t know what you’re doing to me, Heat Bringer,” she whispered as she pulled out of the embrace, “but I never want you to stop.”

“I won’t,” I said, cupping a gentle hand to her cheek, trying to wipe the worry from her face.

“Are you happy?” Passion asked, an expression of… guilt? Why would she feel guilty?

“Of course,” I smiled, starting to thrust into her, “this is paradise, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Heat Bringer,” she smiled, almost ruefully as she began grinding atop me, “because you’re here with me.”

I’d never asked Passion why she called me Heat Bringer. Was that my name? Did I have a name? It didn’t really matter. All that mattered was the now; Passion’s hot insides clenching around me, Passion’s warm skin pressing against me, Passion’s wet lips melting into me. There was nothing else. There was no one else.

LUCILLA

I hated heights. I hated the vertigo-inducing view from atop the palace tower, I hated traversing the treacherous edges of cliffside roads, but above all, I hated flying. Rationally, I knew the straps that held me to Freydis were strong enough to haul a cow, but that didn’t stop me from cringing with every little slip of the ropes. Rationally, I knew the likelihood of Freydis crashing was slim, but that didn’t stop me from imagining the nosedive. Rationality had little real-estate in my mind when I was staring down at seven-hundred feet of nothing. I tried to hold in the need to piss and vomit as I scoured the tiny features beneath me, hoping beyond hope that a mane of red hair would pop out somewhere.

Where the fuck did you go?!

Freydis landed on a thick branch high in the canopy, giving me a chance to do the necessities. Even though its diameter was easily twenty feet, its curved surface led me to believe a stiff gust of wind would send me tumbling right off it. Freydis stood confidently while I crawled on my hands and knees, trying to keep my eyes fixed on what was right in front of me, and not the thousand-foot drop at my sides. Had I been looking up, I probably would have noticed the arrowhead pointing right at me, but I didn’t. No, I crawled, grumbling and cursing right into the point of it.

“Ow, shit!” I yelled, rubbing the top of my head, looking up, and then groaning. It was a nymph warrior, all five feet of him packed with muscle and weaponry, standing naked save for the straps that held his blades. Freydis spun on her heel, reached for her axe, and then stopped as scores of arrowheads protruded from the foliage, seeming to filter from the greenery. We were fucked.

Freydis was stripped of her axe and bound by the hands and feet. I probably would have been tied in a similar manner, until our captors saw the markings on my flesh. Then, I was tied with every piece of rope they could find, and carried by a pole like a prized pig. I might’ve been worried that they were going to eat me had I not been so preoccupied with screaming my lungs out in terror. The nymphs decided that the best way to transport Freydis and I, was to toss us from branch to branch, catch us with nets, and then toss us again. I was thrown over the thousand-foot drop repeatedly, and tossed through the trees for a mile until we got to the colony.

The nymph colony of Arbortus was essentially a large tree house, but instead of a house, it was thousands of buildings, and instead of a single tree, it was twenty massive Great Maples. The wood buildings covered the connecting branches like barnacles on a wharf, seemingly built at random. A closer look would show that each building was precisely engineered to be built where it was, but from a distance, it looked like a shanty town in the skies. Ropes and ladders hung from every branch, spiraling steps wound the circumference of the trunks, and bridges were constructed across thinner spans, allowing for easy transport from tree to tree.

The nymphs moved with deft agility and confidence, jumping spans like they meant nothing, climbing sheer sides as though it were as simple as taking the stairs. I endured ten more minutes of nerve-wracking transport before I was thankfully dropped on a flat floor inside a spacious hall. From my awkward position on the planks, I could see sunbeams shining through rafters, and carved archways supporting a wooden ceiling. Whispers echoed ahead of me, but I couldn’t crane my neck enough to see who was talking. I was suddenly pulled upright, stripped of my binds, and then stripped of my clothing in less than a second. Behind me, I heard Freydis struggling and cursing, and in front of me, sat the eight matriarchs of Arbortus.

I could tell they were ancient by their turquois hair, light-green complexions, and the overgrown size of their ram-like horns, but the unknowing eye would see them as women barely past their teen years. They were all smooth-skinned and naked, exposing bodies of lean muscle, slender build and petite bust. Nymph females were creatures of subtle curves, but that didn’t mean they weren’t beautiful, and Arch-matriarch Flora Autumnsong was the most beautiful of them all. Her face was almost girlish with its round cheeks, soft chin and big, pine-green eyes, but despite the apparent youthful innocence of her portrait, she held the unmistakable air of authority.
“For thirteen years, we have lived under a shadow,” Flora said, her voice commanding, but not hard, her big eyes watching me intently, “the threat of annihilation. When Emperor Flitari claimed to have the Heat Bringer within his keep, the world thought him mad, but we did not; we knew our enemy too well. We knew that the tenuous peace between our people would not last, that Flitari would find the weapon he needed, and he would use it.”

I crossed my arms over my naked breasts, shivering, but not because it was cold. Freydis had stopped struggling with her captors, and was standing at stiff attention, dignified and stoic as ever.

“Many in Arbortus consider the Heat Bringer to be the very manifestation of evil,” Flora said to me, eyes narrowing, “the power of hell formed flesh, the spiritual enemy of the one true god, the Life Giver.”

Now, I did feel cold. A chill ran up my spine, prickling the hair on my neck, prompting clammy sweat to form over my glowing complexion.

“You can imagine our joy then,” Flora beamed, her gaze softening, “when news reached our ears that this Sister Julia Gendian is no weapon of the emperor, but his bitter enemy. The weapon the imperialists would use to destroy us has turned against them, and found refuge in our borders. We welcome you with open arms, Bound One, and we are grateful for your deeds.”

I let out a long exhale, feeling the weight lift from my chest and the terrified chill warm from my skin. I was not going to be executed. Freydis’s binds were cut, and she was handed back her axe, which she snatched indignantly from its bearer and rested on her shoulder instead of strapping it to her back.

“You have a hell of a way of showing gratitude, Your Grace,” Freydis growled.

“I apologize for the overzealousness of our scouts,” Flora said dismissively, “but there has been a dramatic increase in mage infringement within our borders, and we can take no chances.”

“We’ve noticed,” Freydis grumbled. Flora pointedly ignored Freydis’s anger.

“What is your name, Bound One?” she asked me.

“Sister Silvia Septina of The Seventh Order of the Holy Mother,” I said, taking the mother’s name of Julia’s order, and changing the prefix to match my age, “and this is Freydis Skyborne of Iona.”

“The High Guard herself! We’re honored,” Flora said with raised eyebrows, revealing something about Freydis that I didn’t know. I turned my head and gave her an inquisitive look, but she did not return my gaze. Her jaw was working subtly and her fists were clenched. I realized with a sinking heart that I’d forgotten that valkyries cannot deceive, and with barely any prying at all, the matriarchs could find my true identity from Freydis. The cold sweats started creeping back, and I hurriedly redirected the matriarchs’ attention to me.

“We are grateful for your hospitality, wise matriarchs, and I am certain Sister Julia would be more than open to an alliance against our common enemy,” I said, using what little diplomatic skills I’d picked up between benders at my estate, “but Sister Julia has been missing for the past eight days.”

The matriarchs gave each other nervous glances, and joined heads in a conference of whispers. They sat back, and Flora addressed me again.

“Where did she go missing?” she asked.

“Near the eastern entrance of Arbortus,” I replied, “the first night we were here.”

“Do you believe that she was captured by the emperor’s agents?” Flora asked.

“That was my first thought,” I said, “but then a squad of mages attacked my retinue, killing two of my friends. I doubt they’d be in your forest if they’d already found Julia.”

“I’m sorry for your losses,” Flora said, “but it could be that they already have her, and are seeking to kill you to sever the bond.”

“I don’t think they would’ve gotten Julia without a fight,” I said, “she hasn’t drawn from me once since she’s been missing. She hasn’t even flared up on my flesh, but I still glow; it’s like she’s been sedated.”

“Did you say she disappeared by the eastern entrance?” one of the matriarchs asked. I nodded.

“Eight days ago?” another asked. I nodded again.

“And she left at night?” a third matriarch asked. Again, I nodded. Every matriarch looked to Flora, the atmosphere of the room growing suddenly tense.

“Well shit,” Flora said, frowning and sitting back, “the cunt got her.”

“What?” I asked, confused and worried.

“Arbortus is a super-organism,” Flora explained. “Each Great Maple acts as an appendage, all connected by the entwined roots that serve as vessels. There is no heart to this being, and there is no mind, but there is a womb, and where there’s a womb, there’s a cunt, and that cunt calls herself Passion.”

“She is the spirit of fertility, and you will respect her!” a matriarch hissed at Flora.

“Not again,” groaned a matriarch, putting her head in her hands.

“She’s a cunt, Ashvine,” Flora scoffed to the first woman. “Just because she’s an essential cunt doesn’t make her less of one.”

“You know she’s just trying to protect herself,” another mage said quietly. “It’s her nature to be intrusive.”

“‘Intrusive’ is an interesting word,” Flora laughed humorlessly, “I think it fits her aptly.”

“You always blamed her for your familial problems,” Ashvine growled at Flora, “but it wasn’t her fault; it was your mother’s!”

“Are you calling my mother a whore?” Flora growled back.

“Quite the opposite!” Ashvine snapped. “If she hadn’t been so unwilling to bear an heir, the other matriarchs wouldn’t have been compelled to seek Passion’s help, and an incubus would never have gone to her bed.”

“Oh, that’s a fine solution!” Flora yelled, raising her hands. “Instead of listening to the woman to discover the reason for her chastity, let’s just send a beast to coerce her into fucking!”

“That beast was your father,” said another matriarch, “and he loved you.”

“He certainly had an interesting way of showing it. I didn’t know absence was a form of love.”

“Are you sure?” Ashvine snarled. “Because that’s the exact kind of love you showed Willowbud!”

The room fell suddenly silent, all eyes fixed on the locked gazes of Flora and Ashvine. It didn’t take too much conjecture on my part to realize these two matriarchs hated each other. I should have felt relieved that their eyes weren’t taking in my nudity, but I felt even worse. The hostility was so thick in the air I could practically taste it.

“How dare you,” Flora whispered, her body shaking.

“How dare I?” Ashvine hissed back, “How dare I?! You exiled my niece to Tentigo without telling my brother, and you have the audacity to vilify me?!. Twelve years-twelve years he searched for her, only to end up dead in some gutter in Drastin!”

“You have no idea what I sacrificed!” Flora said haggardly, her face twisting. “You have no idea why I did what I did!”

“Oh, we all know, Flora,” Ashvine laughed cruelly. “Great Giver knows your vanity killed your husband and your own daughter!”

Oh shit. I thought, exchanging glances with Freydis. I stepped over to her as the screams became louder and shriller.

“Hey, uh…” I whispered to her, “…I don’t think you should tell them about what happened to Tentigo.”

“I must,” Freydis said, “they need to be warned.”

“Maybe after we get Julia from this ‘Passion’ lady,” I said quietly as Ashvine and Flora stood, their faces inches apart, their spittle flying from their peeled lips, “but I’m afraid you might somehow start a civil war if you tell them now.”

Freydis looked gravely at the screeching women, their green faces now red with fury, their eyes bulging with hate, their heads cocked forward, looking as though they’d ram each other with their horns. Freydis nodded slowly, and I let out a relieved sigh. After a few minutes of screaming, Flora pulled rank, and Ashvine stomped from the room, her fists clenched, her eyes glaring furiously at me. Clearly, she wasn’t one of the nymphs that held progressive ideals about the Heat Bringer. I shuddered. The sooner I got out of Arbortus, the better. The remaining matriarchs reorganized themselves in their chairs, Flora breathing deeply through her nose, trying to exhale her fury.

“I am sorry, Sister Septina and High Guard Skyborne,” Flora said, composing herself. “That was something you did not need to see.”

I shrugged my shoulders uncomfortably, unsure of what to say.

“Passion doesn’t answer to anyone,” Flora said, “but she must listen to me if I come to speak with her. High Guard Skyborne, how many passengers can you carry in flight?”

“I can carry you and the Bound One,” Freydis said. “If we leave now, we can make it to the eastern border of Arbortus by this evening.”

“And time is of the essence,” Flora nodded, standing up, “let us be off.”

JULIA

Passion’s sons drank from my breasts, her daughters tasted my holes, and she herself, sucked from my manhood. I bit my lip and relaxed in the bed of sexual splendor, closing my eyes as I felt tongues sheening the tissue of my insides, lips pulling milk from my erect nipples, and a throat gently constricting around my cock. I splayed my fingers out lazily, shifted wantonly, moaned delectably. Minutes, hours, days and weeks meant nothing. The name ‘Heat Bringer’ meant nothing, and the name ‘Julia’ meant even less. The girl tasting my anus left it vacant, and a man came to take her place, pushing his bulging rod deep into my filth, causing me to whimper in gratitude as my back arched. Another man came up to me, rigid as desired, stroking himself with the lubrication that seeped from the womb and sheened our bodies. I stared along the length of him, smiled a half-lidded gaze, and pulled by body upward, reaching back and spreading my pale cheeks. I didn’t know how long I’d been in paradise, but somewhere down the line, my anus had lost some of its elasticity. I hardly ever gave my favorite hole a rest, and now it was almost constantly gaping; a ruby ruin centering the supple bulge of my glutes. This may have alarmed me at some point in my life, I didn’t know, but in paradise, it only excited me. Now I had room for more. The man already inside my ass moved, and the new man slid below me, centering his cock against his brother’s, and guiding me downward, stretching me into painful euphoria. They pressed on all sides of my sinful hole, rubbing against my prostate, causing my cock to curve with engorgement in their mother’s mouth. Their sisters licked my taint and trailed their tongues into the folds of my pussy as their brothers sucked the milk from my breasts, drawing from me in constant pleasure.

My lust was never an exerting thing in paradise, but a languid, shifting thing, savoring every touch and violation to the fullest. My anus was slowly expanded, gaping me to new girths, training me for the day where I could add another man to the mix. I let my head drop behind my shoulders, my hair tumbling back, tickling the man’s face behind me as he held me upright, gently raising and lowering me onto his violating member. I moaned to the ceiling, exalting in my debauchery, living life by the seconds between breaths, by the pleasure between heartbeats.

“I have a surprise for you,” Passion whispered, licking the tip of my cock. “I think you’ll like it.”

“I always love your surprises,” I smiled. “What is it?”

“You’ll see,” Passion giggled teasingly, her tongue traveling to my base, “it’s almost done. Just a few more—”

“Passion?” a distant voice called from somewhere. Passion jolted upright, her eyes widening.

“Passion?” the voice called again. “It’s Flora. I know you have the Heat Bringer in there.”

There was that name again; Heat Bringer. Why did they call me that?

“Is this your surprise?” I asked, petting Passion’s hair as I grinded on my sodomizers. “Is she going to join us?”

“Passion,” the voice called again, louder this time, “I know you’re in there. I’ve got a valkyrie with a big fucking axe, and she isn’t as patient as I am.”

“She sounds mad,” I giggled. “I wonder what she’ll do to us?”

Passion was not sharing in my playfulness. Her eyes were darting nervously from me, to the slit in the room.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, my lightheartedness dwindling just a bit.

“Nothing,” Passion said, smiling unconvincingly, “you stay here, and I’ll take care of it. Don’t worry,” she kissed the tip of my throbbing shaft, and smiled with a little more conviction, “I’ll be back; just stay here.”

LUCILLLA

I didn’t know how the hell Julia physically got here. The path from our old campsite to the cherry blossom tree was a treacherous maze of twisting roots, some of which stood a hundred feet from the ground and offered only a few inches of foot room. A nymph might be able to traverse the path, but an elf? Impossible. It was no wonder Drask, Torondi and I never found her.

Freydis stood with her axe in hand, waiting for Flora to give her permission to start hacking at the bulging mass of wood. Flora tapped her foot impatiently, and was about to give Freydis the nod, when the tree opened. Pink light glowed from a slit in the trunk, and a nymph the likes of which I’d never seen emerged from its depths. To say Passion was stunning would be an understatement. Not only was she more voluptuous than any nymph in Arbortus, but her tan skin sparkled from thousands of gemstone freckles, her hair waved a garish scarlet from her crown, and protruding from this mane, were two black antlers. Her golden irises quivered from their purple depths, and her lush lips trembled to the cadence of her chattering teeth. She was terrified. Good. I hated this bitch the moment I saw her.

“W-w-w-what do you w-w-want, Flora?” Passion stuttered.

“The Heat Bringer, you stuttering whore,” Flora laughed cruelly, clearly enjoying Passion’s fear, “let her go.”

“I can’t,” Passion said softly, “she’s a threat.”

“She’s no threat,” Flora said, waving her hand impatiently. “She killed the emperor’s own daughter; she is no ally of the elves.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Passion said, only looking at Flora, not daring to look at me, “she has the potential to end all of us.”

“Hey!” I yelled at Passion, but she would not meet my gaze. “Julia doesn’t give a shit about your fucking forest! Let her go!”

“I am sorry, Bound One,” Passion said, her purple eyes glistening, but still looking away, her bottom lip trembling uncontrollably, “but I cannot let her go.”

“Why the fuck not?!” I shrieked. She wouldn’t look at me; the bitch wouldn’t look at me!

“B-b-b-because…” Passion whispered, staring off to the side, “because I love her.”

Hot rage boiled inside me, burning into my mind, electrifying my muscles. I rushed Passion like a crazed animal, and pounced on her, tearing at her hair, scratching at her face, trying to deface her beauty to a mass of bloody pulp. I’d never laid my hands on anyone in anger before, but I couldn’t stop myself now. The audacity of this woman, the balls on her, to say she loved Julia, when Julia had bound with me?!

“Look at me, you cunt!” I screamed, beating her over and over, smacking her face into a blur of flailing scarlet hair. “Julia belongs to me! She loves me! She doesn’t give a shit about you!”

Passion didn’t try to defend herself; she let me beat her. She let me scratch and bite and rip until my fingernails broke and my arms grew tired. Freydis put her arms around me comfortingly, and then pulled me away, leaving the spirit of Arbortus sobbing and breathing raggedly, but infuriatingly unharmed. The scratches on her face melded together, the patches on her scalp filled with hair, and the bruises on her body dimmed to nothing. She stood on wobbling legs, wiped the grime from her face, and looked at me for the first time.

“I am sorry, Bound One,” she said, her voice wavering in her chest, “but I cannot give her back to you.”

The rage left me, and only the sinking despair remained. There was nothing I could do to this woman, nothing that would shake her resolve. She was terrified of me, but she was willing to face that fear for her love. For my love.

“Please,” I begged, feeling tears welling in my own eyes, “please let her go.”

“I’m sorry,” Passion mouthed silently, looking painfully guilty. She turned around, her hands leaving the side of the threshold, and Julia stepped into view behind her. My jaw clicked open. Julia moved with a sultriness that would put a succubus to shame, and smiled with a confidence that would make a prince shit himself. It wasn’t just her demeanor that had changed, but her body as well. Her breasts stood fuller and higher on her chest, now larger than my own, her skin sparkled with thousands of gemstone freckles, and between her legs… holy Mother above… between her legs, dangled a long, thick, veiny cock. Her gaze swept over Freydis, me, and Flora with passing disinterest, and then she grabbed Passion by the ass, and kissed her with a hedonism that would’ve made a whore blush.

“Who are your friends?” Julia asked Passion after she’d pulled from the kiss, smiling into her lover’s purple eyes.

“Don’t worry about them,” Passion whispered, caressing Julia’s apple cheek, “they were just leaving.”

They turned away from us, Passion’s arm wrapped around Julia’s waist, Julia’s hand buried in the fat of Passion’s ass.

“Julia!” I called raggedly to her, struggling in Freydis’s arms. “Julia, it’s Lucilla Flitari!”

Flora snapped her head sharply toward me, her eyes widening and her mouth falling agape, but I didn’t give a shit about her. Julia paused for a moment, turning over her pale shoulder and giving me a confused smile, before facing away once more.

“Julia!” I screamed. “Don’t you know me?”

She didn’t turn around.

“Don’t you love me?!” I cried hoarsely, my throat catching in my neck.

She just kept walking. The slit in the wood began to close, the image of my love thinning, her form growing to a dark silhouette against the pink glow. The last I’d ever see of her, unless I said the right thing. The words that would bring Julia back to herself. The words that had defined her.

“You killed your parents, Julia!” I shrieked after her. “You burned them alive, you murderer!”

JULIA

Life had been a blissful melody, each note playing in perfect succession with the other, each chord thrumming in time with the light cadence, each verse and chorus a tune of care-free nothing. Then someone cut the strings, someone smashed the drums, someone slaughtered the choir. I stopped suddenly, my breath catching in my throat, my mind beating against my skull.

“Heat Bringer?” Passion asked beside me, failing to conceal the touch of alarm in her voice. “Are you alright?”

Mommy and Daddy are yelling at each other…

My face slackened as the memory played before my eyes.

“Hey,” Passion whispered, taking my hand in her face, her eyes searching mine, “what’s wrong?”

I’m crying in the corner, trying to get them to stop yelling…

My lip began to tremor and twitch, indenting my cheek with pained lines.

“Shhhhh,” Passion cooed, trying to be gentle and calming, trying to keep the fear from her eyes, “don’t worry about the past; let it fade from you.”

Mommy is snarling in Daddy’s face, poking her finger into his chest…

My eyes began to quiver in their sockets, burning with eminent tears.

“You didn’t do those things she said,” Passion whispered, trying to bring me into embrace. “She’s a liar, Heat Bringer; she just wants to hurt you.”

Daddy winds back his hand and slaps Mommy, sending her spiraling to the ground…

My vision filmed over, my hands clenched and unclenched, my breath grew hot in my chest.

“Let me help you forget,” Passion pleaded, her eyes wet, her hands grasping for me, “let me take the pain away.”
I’m screaming at Daddy, screaming high and loud, so shrilly I don’t even realize it’s my voice…

My muscles tensed beneath my skin, stronger than I remembered, surging with an energy that was all-too familiar.

“Let me love you!” Passion gasped, pushing her body against mine, grabbing hold of me desperately. “Please!”

It erupts from my body, uncontrollable, untamed, uncaring. Blue fire bursting from every surface of my form, setting the world aflame. Blackened faces screaming in agony, melting before my eyes… Mommy… Daddy…

My heart was thumping irregularly in my chest, an off-beat cadence that tore at my diaphragm. I fell into Passion, my mouth gasping, my eyes crying, my head a fever of memories, their pain burning into my temples and behind my sockets, raging against my skull.

“Please, Julia,” Passion sobbed into my chest, hands squeezing my shoulders, “please come back to me.”

Julia, that was my name. Julia Gendian; former sister of the Maternal Order, orphan of parents I had murdered, god of a religion I didn’t believe in. Lover of a woman who’d known me my whole life. Captive of a spirit who had stolen me from her.

I looked down in horror at the body she had changed, down at the evidence of sin that laid bare upon my flesh. Sin that would never wash away, sin that could not be forgiven. Deformation for the sake of depravity, indulgence in excess and debauchery, abandonment of everything I once stood for. My identity had been raped from me, my gender mutilated for perverse purposes, but that’s not what tortured me now. No, the agony that raged in my mind, was the knowledge that I had asked for it.

“What did you do to me?” I hissed through clenched teeth, my fingers sinking into Passion’s shoulders.

“Only what you wanted,” Passion whimpered, eyes bulging and trembling.

“What I wanted?!” I growled, shaking Passion. “Do you think I wanted this?!”

“I’m sorry!” Passion cried, still trying to pull me close, still trying to fuck me.

“You’re sorry?” I snarled, forcing her face to within a breath of mine. “You’re sorry?!”

“I love you,” Passion whimpered, her big, purple eyes staring with all the adoration in the world.

I actually laughed. An uncontrollable, hideous bout of mirth came pouring from some dark place within me, some rot that had festered and spread to every corner of my mind. I was already a murderer, wasn’t I? I was damned to hell for the worst kind of sin, and I’d spent all my life trying to pray away the unforgivable. I’d always been a liar, a disgusting cunt who’s good at pretending, as Lucilla had said, except I’d only ever been lying to myself. This body was my reward from damnation, my true form, a reflection of the black soul that dwelt within it. Why not stack one more mortal sin onto the pyre, and reserve a better seat in hell?

I grabbed Passion by her mane of scarlet and tore her head back, smiling into her bulging eyes as my hand ran covetously along her form. Her breath quickened in her throat, her back arched for me, and she melted to me, her body teeming with desire as her lenses quaked with fear. I loosened the hold I had on her mane, and tenderly cupped her wet cheek into my palm as my other hand pulled her close by the small of her back.

“In a way, Passion,” I smiled warmly, wiping her tears away with my thumb, “I love you too.”

I kissed her trembling lips. I tasted her fear, her love and her regret, and then I burst alight in white flame. I didn’t stop kissing her as she blackened and crackled, hissed and fused. I didn’t stop kissing her until she was ash.

LUCILLA

“You’re supposed to be dead,” Flora’s voice sounded from somewhere as I rested against the cherry blossom tree, my cheek pressing into the bark, my hands splayed pathetically across it.

“I’m supposed to be a lot of things,” I muttered, “but the only thing I’ve managed to be is a disappointment. Sorry to disappoint you.”

Freydis’s axe struck the tree for the twentieth time, hardly making a gouge in the wood. She cursed under her breath, wiped her brow, and went back at it, sending chips and sparks flying as blade met hard bark. Flora crouched in front of me, taking my chin in her hand and matching our gazes.

“Does your Father know you’re alive?” Flora asked. I shook my head. “Does anyone?” she asked, and I shook my head again. She let out a relieved sigh, and then levelled our eyes. “You need to leave Arbortus,” Flora said slowly, as though speaking to a child, “you need to leave now. If the other matriarchs find out who you are, you’re dead, and I’m dethroned. You have a day to leave before I send scouts, and they won’t be taking you prisoner.”

“I’m not leaving Julia,” I grumbled.

“Julia has left you, Princess,” Flora frowned, standing up. “Passion is honor-bound to see me when I call, and she has. She will not come out again, and Freydis will not cut her way into the womb within this century.”

“She’ll come back to me,” I muttered, more to myself than Flora. “She has to.”

“I said the same thing about my husband,” Flora said, scowling down at me. “I said the same thing about my daughter after I’d realized what I’d done. They don’t come back, Princess; they just die.”

My flesh illuminated brighter than it ever had, blinding the world in white light. Flora covered her face with her hands, Freydis fell backward, and I smiled.

JULIA

Passion’s children were ash on the floor, her womb was a burnt, bleeding cavern that smelled of charred meat. Her ethereal voice was raspy and hoarse in my mind, a dim song begging for mercy.

Please, Julia! Passion croaked. There is still time to undo this!

“You raped and deformed me,” I replied, my form ablaze on every surface, my footsteps searing into the living floor.

I loved you! Passion screamed in anguish. I still do! We can still be together, Julia; I can forgive you!

“Forgive me?” I laughed, writing my name on the walls with a gout of flame, hearing the sweet sound of Passion’s screams in the womb.

You don’t know what you’re doing! Passion cried, her voice far-past desperation. It’s not just me you’re killing, but the entire forest!

“A true atrocity,” I smiled, “like Droktin’s Pass, or the melting of Hektinar. I wonder what they’ll call this?”

Stop, please! Passion sobbed, her voice sounding like that of an old woman’s.

“Why should I?” I asked, breathing in wet smoke and fire.

We have a daughter! Passion screeched; her voice wrought with agony. She’s still incubating within my womb. If you kill me, you’ll kill her!

“That was your surprise, huh?” I chuckled. “Sorry Honey, but I’m not ready to be a father. You’ll just have to get that abortion.” Keep my seat warm for me, Satan.

Please, Julia, Passion whimpered, I don’t want to die.

“But I want you to.” I grinned up at the ceiling, and then raised my arms, and blasted the roof off. I tested the limits of my powers, and realized there were none. I reveled in the excess with Passion one last time, and surged my endless blaze into the sky. The cherry blossom tree disintegrated above me, its remnants flying upward, propelled by the white vortex that pierced the night clouds, and thinned to a line in the stratosphere. I was a beacon of light for the world to see, a symbol of death for all to witness. I drew more and more, laughing as the power coursed through me, feeling every nerve electrify as I did what my blasphemous body was meant to do.

The catharsis faded from me with the last echoes of Passion’s screams, and I let the endless vortex dwindle and disappear. I smiled to myself, my heart feeling light, my body thrumming pleasantly. Blackness surrounded me, charred vestiges of my vengeance, smoky reminders of my divine justice. My smile faded, and my heart began to grow heavier. I frowned and shivered, suddenly feeling very cold. I dropped to my knees, my flesh connecting with something that was once alive, something that I had once loved. I pulled my hand from the ashes and looked at it, staring at the lines of death that creased my palms, reading my fortune like a morbid mystic.

“Oh my god,” I whispered, tears falling from my eyes, “what have I done?”

Only silence answered me. The crickets weren’t chirping their mating calls, the bats weren’t flitting lustfully in the air, and the owls weren’t hooting their love across the branches. The beautiful green lights that had illuminated this place of majesty were gone, leaving only dead blackness, and the embers of my fire. I had done it; I had killed Arbortus. It wouldn’t die today, or tomorrow, or even in a year, but it would be dying for that long, losing a little bit of its brilliance each moment until the last tree fell. Passion’s shrieks echoed in my skull, joining the discordant harmony of my mother and father in the deep pit of my psyche. I only killed what I loved. There was nothing in me but death.

“Father?” a soft voice asked from behind me. I started upright and whirled around, feeling the blaze beginning to alight on my skin. Good Mother, she looked like me. She had my apple cheeks, red lips, emerald irises, white sclera, and pointed ears, but Passion’s hue of red hair, and Passion’s black antlers sprouting from it. Her sparkling complexion was a mixture of Passion’s shade and mine, giving her an olive tone, and it layered over a slender, but nubile body. Her breasts were petite but well-formed, her backside was cute and supple, her legs were thin but toned, and between her thighs, dangled the same deformity as her mother’s… or father’s, I guessed.

“Mother made me leave the womb once you started burning stuff,” my daughter said, looking around with wide eyes, “she said you were going to kill her.”

I swallowed, unable to even say ‘I’m sorry,’ unable to make any sound at all. I just sat on my knees before the girl I had fathered, before the girl I’d tried to kill in utero just a minute ago. She did not seem to be mad at me; she didn’t even seem to be sad. She just looked around at the black silhouettes of the Great Maples, her mouth hanging open.

“Is the world always this dark?” she asked. “Mother told me there was supposed to be something called ‘the sun’ and it—there it is!” she exclaimed excitedly, pointing toward the sky, “It’s not yellow like she said, and it’s not exactly a circle, more like a crescent, but—”

“That’s the moon,” I said quietly. “The sun comes out during the day.”

“The moon!” my daughter said with hushed awe. “So, this is night, huh? Where are all the green lights?”

“Your mother made the lights,” I whispered, my voice shaking, “and I killed her.”

“That you did,” she said, looking at the ashes, “and you did quite a good job of it.”

“I’m sorry,” I barely spoke, breathing ragged with eminent weeping. “I’m so, so sorry.”

“Mother told me you would be really sad,” my daughter said as she walked toward me, “she said not to blame you for killing her; she said it was her own fault.”

“No,” I replied softly, turning my hand over in the ashes, “I chose to do this. I wanted to do this. I’m evil.”

“You’re not evil!” my daughter laughed, sitting cross-legged across from me. “You’re my dad, and since I’m not evil, that means you can’t be either! Everyone knows evil is hereditary.”

“Everyone knows that, huh?” I said numbly. “Who’s everyone?”

“Um…” my daughter said, eyes wide, looking bewildered, “…I think I just made that up! What is that called, when you say something that’s not true?”

“A lie,” I replied, undoubtedly looking as bewildered as my daughter.

“A lie!” she exclaimed proudly. “I just told a lie! Maybe I am evil!”

“Passion taught you the word ‘hereditary,’ but she didn’t teach you about lying?”

“Don’t be too hard on her,” my daughter insisted in almost a scolding tone, “she only had about thirty seconds to teach me language, motor skills, concepts of life and death, math, physics, biology, and history before you blew her up.”

“Oh.” I replied, dropping my head, my emotions a dumbing mixture of confusion, grief and shame.

“Hey,” my daughter smiled, putting a hand on my knee, “she also taught me about how great a person you are; how kind and loving you can be, how gentle and patient you are.”

“I’m none of those things,” I whispered, a tear rolling down my cheek.

“You are all of those things,” my daughter grinned brightly, “and I love you, Dad.”

My daughter crawled forward, turned around, and sat in my lap. She snuggled into my abdomen, made a pillow of my breasts, and then folded my arms around her. I sat stupidly for a moment, terrified and confused, ashamed and bewildered. Some primal feeling began to swell within me. It was a warmth in my chest, a thrumming in my heart, a softness in my troubled mind. This was my child; I knew it without having to know, felt it without having to feel. Maternal and paternal instincts kicked-in, and I pulled my daughter into a protective, loving embrace, placed my lips on her crown and kissed her. She was Passion’s gift to me, the surprise she no-doubt thought would cement a love she’d engineered, but a love I had felt nonetheless. It made the guilt almost unbearable, but the warmth of my daughter’s form quelled the anguish. I made a silent promise to the woman I’d murdered; no harm would come to our daughter. I swore it on what was left of my soul.

“The last thing Mother told me,” my daughter said softly, “was to help you find someone called ‘the Life Giver.’ She said the Life Giver could rebuild the womb and save Arbortus.”

“The Life Giver is a Creator,” I said, resting my chin on my daughter’s head, “like me. No one knows who, what or where he or she is.”

“He’s a human boy,” my daughter said, “his name’s Bradley, or Bradford, or something. He lives in Drastin with a vampire.”

“What?” I exclaimed. “How do you know?”

“Mother had a permanent connection with all creatures born here,” the girl said, splaying her arms out dramatically to the darkness. “They were all conceived because of her mating mushrooms, so in some ways, she was kind of a mother to all of them. Some old lady was hanging out with this Brant guy, and she was born here, so Mother knew where he was. She told me the vampires address, told me to tell you, and then she died.”

Redemption. No, not redemption, there was no redemption from this, but there was restitution, and that was a start. Passion’s last moment were valiant ones, and that knowledge made my guilt even more painful, but I resolved not to waste her efforts. The pain within me was good; pain was a healer. The guilt was good; the guilt would remind me, the guilt would teach me, the guilt would strengthen me. I was damned to hell ten-times over, but that didn’t mean I would jump into the express lane. Satan could find a seat for me in the back, with less leg room.

“Tell me where the Life Giver lives.”

LUCILLA

“What have you done?” Flora coughed beside me, ashes falling on our bodies like snow. Freydis lay still in the brush, unconscious, but breathing.

“I tried to hold it in,” I groaned as I pulled a branch off me, “but I can’t keep her from using it if she wants to.”

“She’s killed my kingdom!” Flora gasped, kneeling before the blown-out remains of Passion’s womb. “She’s destroyed everything!”

“I would say I’m sorry,” I said, dusting myself off, “but your kingdom tried to steal her from me.”

“The harvest won’t come,” Flora lamented, not listening to me, “the trees won’t bear fruit, the roots won’t yield sprouts, the grain will wither and the stalks will fall. My people will starve.”

I knew I should’ve felt horrified at what Julia had done, but I only felt relief. It was, after all, exactly what I’d hoped she’d do. I had gladly traded an entire nation for my own romance, but no one ever accused me of being selfless. Julia however, was as empathetic as I was narcissistic, and I had no doubts that she was near-suicidal with guilt.

“They’ll hang me for this,” Flora was muttering, looking around with disbelieving eyes. “Ashvine will take my crown, and lead the exodus to Tentigo. I’ll be forever known as the arch matriarch who let Arbortus be destroyed by the enemy.”

I climbed the smoldering wreckage of the womb, and crested the wooden crater to find Julia sitting cross-legged in the middle of it all, with what could only be her daughter sitting in her lap. I knew it the moment I saw her; the resemblance was uncanny. The girl’s eyes flicked to me, and she grew small in her mother’s arms like a shy toddler, an action that seemed incredibly odd coming from a fully-grown woman. Julia eyed me for a second, a maternal look of protectiveness on her face that I didn’t much care for. She turned her attention to the girl, nuzzling her mouth against her daughter’s pointed ears, and whispering something. The girl tentatively relaxed, and Julia nodded for me to come forward. This… this was going to be tough. I could immediately tell I was no longer the most important person in Julia’s life, and that did not gel with me at all. I silently cursed Passion once more as I made my way to the new family, trying to figure out how I fit into it.

“This is Lucilla,” Julia said to her daughter, watching me as I approached, “she’s kind of like my wife, but we’re not married.”

“Hi Lucilla,” the girl said, smiling a small smile. I returned it with a smile of my own, though there wasn’t anything genuine behind it, and Julia could tell.

“Lucilla doesn’t know you,” Julia said, staring hard into my eyes, “but she will, and you two will learn to love each other, because that’s what family does.”

That message was loud and clear; I could either be the bitchy step-mom, or the cool one, and my choice would dictate the new dynamic of our relationship. I naturally leaned toward the former option, but I’d try my damnedest to be the latter. I took a seat next to Julia, grinning internally as I felt Passion’s ashes shift between my ass cheeks. How’s that smell, you home-wrecking cunt?

“What’s your name?” I asked the girl in Julia’s lap.

“I don’t have a name,” she replied.

“What would you like your name to be?” Julia asked her daughter.

“Um…” the girl mused, looking around, “how about… Diamond?”

“Because you sparkle like a diamond?” Julia chuckled.

“That’s right,” Diamond grinned, staring up at her mother from the tops of her eyes.

“Diamond’s a stripper’s name, Sweetie,” I said to the girl. “Maybe pick something less slutty.”

Julia gave me a withering glare, but I just shrugged.

“It’s true.” I said matter-of-factly. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that it’s coming from a girl whose mother was named ‘Passion,’ but…”

I stopped as I felt Julia’s power boiling within me, ready to blaze from her narrowing eyes and melt me to nothing. Though I was resistant to her flame, I still felt the terror. This was not the same woman who couldn’t kill a mage to save her own life; this Julia was much more dangerous. Goddamn, was it sexy. Julia’s entire persona screamed sex and violence. The way she carried herself, the way she stared at me, the way she looked in general. Julia undoubtedly thought her new body was an abomination, but all I could see were improvements. I hated Passion with a… passion, but I had to admit, I was a fan of her work.

“Diamond is a great name,” I gulped, “absolutely beautiful.”

Julia’s face softened into a smile, and I had to keep myself from swooning. I doubted Julia wanted to fuck on the ashes of her dead lover, in front of her newborn adult daughter, but I would’ve been down. Hell, Diamond could even join-in if she wanted to. I tried not to look at it, but facial features weren’t the only things mother and daughter had in common.
“Diamond knows where the Life Giver is,” Julia said to me as she kissed her daughter’s head, “he’s a human boy living in Drastin. He can create a new womb, and save Arbortus.”

“That’s great,” I said, looking around at the forest that should be alight with Passion’s glow, “but can he make a new Passion?”

“He can,” Julia said, “but it will be dangerous for him to do. He might create a new Sentient if he fails.”

“Is that what Passion was?” I asked.

“She was flesh and blood in some ways,” Julia said, looking at the ash, “spirit in others, but she was no Sentient; Sentient’s can’t die.”

Julia held her daughter closer, practically smothering Diamond in the embrace. I could see behind her emerald eyes, and she was barely holding it together. I was glad Diamond was with her now; Julia might’ve actually killed herself if she wasn’t. Still, this wouldn’t be an easy wound to heal. It might never heal, but I would do my best. I might be a selfish cunt, but I do know how to love.

“C’mon,” I said, placing my hand on Julia’s arm, “let’s get out of here.”

Excerpt from Arbitrus Gen’s Journal, Chapter Fifteen, Page Two-hundred Seventy-one

As I close out this self-indulgent rumination of my past, I feel compelled to speak directly to you. Not to you, the reader, unless by chance the person reading this is a Heat Bringer. If time and circumstance have brought the two of us together in this moment across millennia, then I can only assume that it is the Holy Mother’s work. I implore you, Heat Bringer. Do not make the mistakes I made. Do not dally in the illusion of love and happiness. These things are not meant for you. You have not been gifted like the Life Giver and the Earth Former; you have been chosen. Chosen to carry the heaviest of burdens. You are death, and you must embrace it. Your purpose is to kill, and you must understand it. Likely, by the time you are of the age that you can read this, you are already well-acquainted with your capacity to destroy. I am sorry for what you have gone through. I am sorry for who you have lost. I am sorry for the guilt that you carry. Remember in your darkest moments, what God always taught her followers. Pain is a healer. Pain makes us stronger. You will be the strongest of them all, Heat Bringer. You have to be to face what is coming.